


Stargate Universe: Echo

by shireteapot



Series: Stargate Universe: Ninth [2]
Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Death, Despair, F/M, Fate, Guilt, Hope, Success, failure - Freeform, life - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:04:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shireteapot/pseuds/shireteapot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How did he get himself into this mess? How did he let it come to sitting in the shadows and waiting to slowly suffocate, planning where he'll hide his body, deciding where he wants to be when it happens? It wasn't supposed to end like this. This is like a nightmare." In which Eli tries to fix the last pod...and his fate is finally revealed. Sequel to Glass. Rated T for language and dark themes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One: Potential

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one of 'Echo', a three-parter and the second instalment in the 'Stargate Universe: Ninth' series. Part two, entitled Emptiness, will be up on Monday 15th April! The third and final part, Fate, will be up on Monday 22nd. Flashbacks and thoughts are in italics. This is my interpretation of Eli's fate after the season two finale. I hope I've managed to do it justice. Feedback is much appreciated, hope you enjoy! MUST HAVE READ 'GLASS' FIRST. 
> 
> After Echo comes the first in a multichapter trilogy - 'Stargate Universe: Light'. This final adventure will take the crew of the Destiny into the darkest depths of the universe, where they will all be changed forever.

xxxx

**Stargate Universe: Echo**

Part One: _Potential._

xxxx

x

 

There never really was another choice. He realises that now. That’s why he didn’t hesitate, why those three words just slipped out of his mouth so easily: _I’ll do it_. He would never have let Rush be the one to stay behind, not when it came down to it. And without Colonel Young they would all be completely lost. But he’s the Boy Genius. He might not have a PhD or a military badge, but he can do this. He can – he can feel it in his bones. No, there never really was another choice, and Eli doesn’t regret that at all.

 

The corridors and rooms around him are lifeless, creaking and groaning, echoing with the grinding seizure of Ancient mechanics as _Destiny_ slowly shuts down. The ship he has called home for the past year is steadily losing all affordable power; he pictures the empty corridors, the mess, the infirmary, the bridge – places where so much has happened, now devoid of life and laughter. The gate room is plunged into darkness, and although he can’t see it, not physically, the mental image is enough to squeeze his heart with a sudden sadness that he wasn’t at all expecting to feel. Flexing his fingers around the cool metal guard rail of the observation deck, Eli looks out at the swirling shimmers of _Destiny_ ’s FTL stream; flickering blues and purples and whites roll endlessly past him, casting shadows on the wall, and he tells himself not to be stupid.

 

 _Don’t be sad_ , he thinks, unwilling to break the strangely comforting silence blanketing him. _Be grateful. Be grateful that you, Eli Wallace, got the chance to be here._ Of all the people in the world, he is one of the few who will get to see the universe. A handful of human beings will ever explorethis beautiful, vast thing that they are all a part of, and he is one of them. And then his face, carefully schooled into an expression of serious determination and thoughtfulness, breaks into a smile. A genuine, bright grin of disbelief and gratitude that he feels right down to the very core of his being. He is so lucky to have this chance to see such things, to see the universe in a way he only ever dreamed of, to _do something_ that matters. But first – and now his smile falters a fraction – he has to fix the pod, and go into stasis with the others.

 

He has two weeks. Two weeks to figure out what’s wrong with the pod, solve the problem, and join the rest of the crew in the long, three-year sleep until the next galaxy. After that life support has been set to go into automatic shutdown, asphyxiating anyone left out of stasis. He can stop that, of course, in order to live a little longer. But he won’t. In his pocket sits a small, rectangular panel that Rush gave to him in his quarters. It’s a handheld timer, programmed to count down his two week window. Minimum life support can only be powered for this set amount of time; the more he talks the more oxygen has to be supplied, which will cause the power to run out faster and his window to shrink. Using any of the ship’s systems will also have the same effect. He swears he can feel the timer burning him through his shirt. Eli still feels pretty confident, but fourteen days really isn’t that much time, not when he thinks about it. Any number of things can go wrong. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he lets go of the guard rail, tearing his eyes away from the FTL stream. Even as he stands here thinking the precious seconds are ticking away. Without a word, Eli turns his back on the shimmers and heads determinedly into the darkness of the ship. He’d better make those seconds count.

 

XxX

 

Loneliness, he knows, might set in fast – so before he even makes his way to the stasis hall he grabs the kino from his quarters, deciding he should document some of the repair. This is pretty much the biggest thing to happen to them all since arriving on _Destiny_ , so it seems obvious that it should make it into the final cut of his documentary. The weight of the familiar, metal sphere in his hand is a welcome comfort. Eli pauses for a moment in the doorway, and then doubles back to pick up the lamp from the floor beside his bunk.

 

XxX

 

“I can’t talk much,” he tells the kino as he tries to hold it in a good position, “’cause talking uses oxygen and I sorta need that.” Grinning at his own words, Eli gestures over his shoulder with his head at one of the pods behind him, and adds, “Rush’s idea.” The man probably remembered Eli’s tendency to talk to himself if left alone for very long. Eli kicked himself for not being the one to think of it, but that doesn’t matter now. Bigger things to deal with. Much bigger. “It’s so _quiet_ ,” he whispers, looking towards the door at the end of the room, his gaze drifting over the sleeping crew members. “I mean, I can barely hear the engines, and except for that there’s just.... _nothing_.” He can’t remember ever hearing or feeling such a level of stillness, such near-silence on board the ship; then it occurs to him that this same noiselessness would have filled _Destiny_ ’s corridors for millions of years before they showed up here, and the sheer eeriness of that thought makes him turn back to the kino. Forcing a smile to help shake the feeling off, he continues, “I’m gonna take a look at the pod now, figure out the problem. I’ll update you when I know what’s up.”

 

 

XxX

 

At first Eli can’t establish anything. He can get the lights in the pod to come on, get the individual system of the pod to run the stasis program – but nothing actually happens. The activation announcement scrolls across the screen in front of him, quickly followed by a sharp _beeeee!_ and a system failure notice. He tries again and again, carefully entering the activation code one digit at a time before he presses the execution button, but every one of his attempts is unsuccessful. When the frustration becomes unbearable he employs another tactic. _There’s always more than one way to do things,_ he assures himself, and starts trying a different sequence of commands. He takes the main interface back to the simple _System Online_ screen at the very beginning, and takes a step away from the panel. Sighing, Eli rubs his forehead as if to erase the confused frown there with his fingertips, needing to clear his mind for a moment. This thing can’t be his defeat. After everything he’s been able to do since Icarus – unlocking the ninth chevron, weapons and shields work, data transfers, holograms, quarantines, system interactions that shouldn’t have been possible – this stasis pod can’t be the thing that beats him. _Boy Genius,_ he reminds himself. _Boy Genius._ _Smarter than Rush._ A hint of a smile briefly appears on his lips. Smarter than Rush indeed. And even the man himself had admitted that Eli had ‘potential’. Feeling a little more confident, Eli steps back up to the interface. The rest of the stasis program has presented no problem at all, so it makes sense that the issue could be with _this_ particular area of the program. Somewhere previously in the sequence he must have encountered a command that no longer works. The damage to the pod could mean that this certain way of reaching the activation menu is not possible anymore, but there has to be another way to get there, some kind of backup. Figuring he’s just wasting time by standing here and wondering, Eli avoids the _Activations_ option and selects another option instead. He only has everything to lose, after all.

 

XxX

 

It takes him hours before he finally manages to circumnavigate the obvious sequence and find a secondary route to activation. Beyond relieved, he enters the code for the millionth time, sure it must be burned into his memory by now. Holding onto the tendril of hope growing inside his chest, he presses the button to execute the command and waits for the hiss of the door to give him the all-clear. It never comes. Instead all he gets is a distinct _beeeee!_ tearing abruptly through the quiet of the ship, and scrolling text that tells him _System Failure_.

 

XxX

 

It’s a setback. He can’t work with _System Failure_. The pod won’t work with _System Failure_. With no idea yet of what else he can do, Eli leaves the interface to run diagnostics while he retreats, kino and lamp in hand, to his quarters.

 

XxX

 

When he sleeps his dreams are restless, filled with uncomfortable memories and torturous images, different versions of how this situation might play out, none of them good. Diagnostics proves his earlier theory wrong by the end of the second day; there’s no issue with the stasis program, or even with the pod system at all. Eli checks four times, using up precious hours but afraid to miss the slightest thing, and each time diagnostics comes up clear. In some ways he supposes he should be more worried, but he’s not. Instead, he actually feels a little better – because if there’s no problem with the individual system, then it means the issue must be with physical damage to the pod itself. And although he’s no engineer, if he can figure out how the components of the pod work, pinpoint the damage and successfully repair it, then the stasis program should run perfectly and it will all be okay.

 

The smile is still on his face as he presses the record button on the kino panel, and sets off into the ship. The camera drifts lazily alongside him as he walks, holding the lamp up so that he can see where he’s going. “It’s been two days,” he begins, unfazed by the way his voice carries throughout the empty corridors. Eli glances at the panel, checking that his face his visible enough in the faint light before looking up at the kino itself. “Twelve days left on the clock, but I’m feeling good about it.” He turns right down an unfamiliar passageway and guides the floating sphere with the panel so that it follows him round the bend. Once on track, he continues, “Diagnostics shows there’s no damage to the individual stasis program of the pod, but the program still won’t run. Which means the physical damage to the pod is what’s causing the problem.” Lifting the lamp higher, he peers at the walls of the corridor, searching for a door. Finding nothing after a minute or so of examination, he lowers the lamp again. There must still be a way to go. He wouldn’t have thought it, but in the darkness – even with a little light – navigating _Destiny_ ’s halls can be seriously disorientating. “It also means that if I can fix the damage, then the stasis program will run fine.” A left this time, and Eli starts to regain his bearings. Scrutinising the walls again he mutters, almost as if to himself, “For that I need tools. And it would really help if I could find the closet.”

 

The ‘closet’, as referred to by the scientists on board the ship, is really more of a storage room in which the science team have stowed an assortment of equipment and paraphernalia, to keep it all together in their three-year absence. In a small crate in one of the corners are bundled several more kinos that Eli had found lying about, leftover from recon missions and off-world trips. The kino he’s using now, he likes to think of as his own personal device; sneaking it into stasis had been the original plan. But in amongst the variety of working machines and failed creations lies Brody’s collection of tools, and that’s what Eli needs to find if he’s going to stand any chance of mending the damage to the final stasis pod. Eli may not be an engineer, but Brody was – _is, is, Brody is_ – and if the right tech for the job is anywhere on this ship, it’ll be in that box of equipment. He leaves the kino to capture his search without further conversation, not forgetting the issue of using up oxygen through speech. Another turn comes up suddenly on his right and he pauses, tapping the panel to stop the kino before it can zoom on out of reach. Eli tries to draw up a mental map of his location, his surroundings having felt more familiar since turning into this corridor. As he looks down the new passage, squinting to try and see further than the light will allow, he thinks back to just a few days previously when he and the rest of the science team were down here putting their things into storage. As soon as he pictures it, he remembers this turn-off quite distinctly, and knows that he’s in the right place. He recalls dragging some of Brody’s less successful inventions along this passage with Dale, Rush repeatedly barking at them to be careful from nearby. _Yep, definitely the right place_. Without any further hesitation Eli sets off down the new corridor, tapping the panel again to let the kino hover along obediently beside him.

 

There’s a confidence, a determination to his strides as he moves forward, looking for the door that he knows is here somewhere. He has a way to save himself now, a way to survive this, and he refuses to fail. He’s Eli Wallace: Math Boy, Boy Genius, un-locker of the ninth chevron and co-founder of an entire race of people on Novus – at least, in an alternate timeline he is. Not the slacker, not the drop-out, not the quitter. He matters now. He _won’t_ know failure anymore. No sooner has a smile started to appear on his face than the lamp throws its faint light over the unmistakeable shape of a door, and Eli’s sigh of relief echoes along the pitch black corridor around him. Before it can fly away, Eli catches the kino in his fingers and hits a few keys on the portable control panel. Instantly the camera stops recording and shuts off, its weight falling into his hand, and he slips it into one of his jacket pockets for safekeeping. The panel goes into the other pocket, his grip on the light tightening as he reaches out into the surrounding shadows for the large control on the wall. The sharp grinding noise of the doors when they slide open seems almost deafening in the thick silence of the ship, but Eli doesn’t let it perturb him. He has a job to do. Stepping into the storage room, he holds the lamp up as high as he can, shaking his head at the fading light; unable to run the recharge plates if he wants to keep his full two-week window, he knows he’ll have to find another lamp soon. The idea of stumbling around in the darkness without one doesn’t appeal to him, but he may well have to spend a few hours unable to see now and then if the lamps are going to run out so quickly. This one _had_ been fully-charged – he doubts very much that many of the others will be, too. For now, though, this lamp will do the job.

 

The light falls on an array of hurriedly stacked crates and piled objects, casting odd, misshapen shadows around the room. Even with the limited visibility it’s obvious that there’s a lot of stuff to sift through, but thankfully the sizeable metal box shouldn’t be too hard to find. Conscious of the clock ticking away what could possibly be the remaining days of his life, Eli starts looking.

 

XxX

 

He trips over the kino crate and a stack of boards within minutes, and nearly drops a box of what turns out to be all their radios on his foot. He also narrowly escapes knocking the case of communication stones to the floor when he accidently shoulders the shelf it sits on, preferring not to think about what Rush would have done to him had it actually fallen. But finally, after nearly half an hour of somewhat clumsy yet meticulous searching, he discovers Brody’s box of tools hidden underneath the prototype of his paper-making machine in a corner. Eli carefully lifts the heavy machine off, struggling a little with the weight, and moves it out of the way. Setting the lamp on the floor beside him as he kneels down, he flips the catch on the box and pops the lid, peering inside at the contents. It’s full of items, just like he remembers: everything from the Earth tools that Brody brought with him to Ancient devices they found already here, and even some custom bits and pieces Brody put together from materials on board the ship. If he really squints he can just see the plasma-cutter Scott and Colonel Young used on Hoth in there, too. Everything he needs should be in this box – and if it’s not, then he’ll have to find a way around it, fast. Eli closes the lid and locks it again, getting to his feet. The only problem now is how to get the box back to the stasis hall without giving himself a hernia in the process. There’s no way he’ll be able to lift it, and attempting to drag it there will take an eternity. Plus it’ll probably leave some great scrape-marks on the floor, and somehow he doesn’t think Rush would be too pleased about that.

 

Sighing, he slowly sits down on the nearest crate, looking around at the other contents of the room. If he was some kind of superhero – or even just a plain old hero for that matter – he’d already have fixed the pod by now. Not to mention he could use his super-strength, if he was that kind of hero, to carry the box himself. Or levitate it with his telekinesis. But no, that’s just wishful thinking. “I’m no hero,” he murmurs to himself in the semi-darkness, “Even if it would be cool to fly.” He surveys the piles of equipment that fill the space around him, imagining how helpful that would be. No, he’s not a hero. _But,_ he reminds himself as his gaze falls on the stack of boards he knocked over earlier, _I am a genius. And I already know how to fly_.

 

XxX

 

He’s back in the stasis hall less than fifteen minutes later, the box having pushed along easily on its board, supported by floating kinos. Under his arm he carries his and Rush’s laptops, grabbed as an afterthought from the shelf. Chances are Rush has something on his that could be of use, and Eli will need his own computer for the small amount of the stasis manual he was able to transfer from _Destiny_ ’s archives in time. He sets them down out of the way on the ground; the kino and panel from his pockets he rests on top of the main stasis interface at the end of the room, and returns his attention to the box. Easing it to the floor is a little tricky as he has to take most of the weight while he slides the kinos out from underneath, one at a time, but eventually he has it safely deposited next to the broken stasis pod. Now comes the real hard part – attempting to take the pod apart, find and repair any internal damage, and put it back together all without breaking the whole thing entirely. And all within twelve days. It’s a daunting challenge to say the least, but he knows he can do it. He can.

 

XxX

 

“Can you even see me in here?” he mutters, holding the kino higher up and further to his right in the hope that a different angle will do the trick. The light is now so dim that his face can barely be seen on the kino; he’s been reduced to sitting in a small pool of weak glowing white light on the floor, and he makes a mental note to go find another lamp as soon as he’s done with this. Checking the panel screen in his lap, he’s finally satisfied with the semi-dark picture in which his expression is just about visible. “Me again!” he announces with a little wave, as if anyone watching wouldn’t already be able to tell. “I found the closet and Brody’s box of tools. I figure if I by some miracle managed to transfer some blueprints or...or diagrams of the pods, when I did the download from the mainframe archives to my laptop, then I can use those to help me poke around and...well, hopefully locate and mend the problem. Or problems.” Raising his eyebrows and inclining his head slightly in admittance that there is highly likely to be more than one issue, Eli glances over his shoulder at the patch of darkness where he knows the two laptops sit. Better just say it. He doesn’t really have any other choice. Turning back to the kino in his hand, he quickly adds, “Sorry Rush, I’m gonna need to use your laptop too. Sorry.” Then, with a sheepish smile, “And yes, I know it’s password-protected. You really think that’s gonna stop me?” Eli shrugs, and points the kino at the dying lamp next to his leg. “First though,” he explains, “I gotta find a new light. This one’s nearly dead.” He tries to sound chipper, so that whenever this is played back in the future – by himself, by the crew, by documentary-watchers – the viewer will know that it’s all okay, that he has faith in his plan. And if they’ve managed to stick around this long, they would know by now that self-belief is a relatively new thing for Eli. New, but refreshing. To prove his point, he turns the kino back to himself and jokes, “I should probably take the individual system of the pod offline, too. Don’t wanna electrocute myself.” He can’t afford to make any silly mistakes now; even the small ones would have dire consequences. “Guess I’d better make a start, go find a lamp,” Eli continues, holding back a sigh. “Update soon.”

 

XxX

 

A few moments is all he needs to take the pod’s system offline, removing the danger of accidental electrocution. Searching the information he transferred from the archives requires a while longer, however. He used a search program to isolate any information that could potentially be relevant to the stasis pods, but didn’t have time to transfer all of that data over to his laptop. Eli begins to sift through the files, slowly and carefully, unable to afford missing the slightest useful detail.

 

XxX

 

Hours pass. One. Two. Three. Four. And then after four and a half hours, two thirds of the way through the transferred data, it begins to dawn on Eli that he actually downloaded nothing of use. His heart has settled somewhere around his navel, a bad feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. Everything so far has only mentioned stasis or the pods in passing, or talked about stasis programs and protocols. That’s not what he needs. Not what he needs at all. The only thing that will really help him now is physical structure information; component functions, or possibly a rough picture of how the pods structurally work. A description. An outline. Anything. Every unsuccessful second that passes he is painfully aware of his depleting battery power, hating that he can’t speed up the process by running the search program again – the power required to run the program would drain his laptop completely, and the recharging plates are off limits. If charging a lamp would cost him hours, he doesn’t want to think what a laptop would cut from his two weeks. He notes down a variety of numerical codes as he searches, anything that looks like it may be useful.

 

_782451110_

_308026885_

_10295_

_551370846_

_487707532_

_914_

_675284301_

_9_

There are enough codes to fill an entire page, until he’s scribbling in the corners and around the edges. A lot of numbers. No information. But he carries on.

 

XxX

 

Nine more files to search. Eleven days to live.

 

XxX

 

And then, like some unbelievable God-sent miracle, Eli finds what he’s been looking for. He opens the first of the final two, largest files, and _bingo_ – he’s met with a sizeable, detailed diagram of the pod’s physical composition, and a whole lot of text. His understanding of Ancient isn’t perfect, but it’s passable; his eyes land on the title _Internal Structure_ and all at once he feels as if an enormous weight has been lifted off his shoulders. Scrolling down, he discovers more diagrams, each corresponding to a layer of structure. Eli can’t help but grin in relief, and as he continues scrolling the grin turns into a laugh and the laugh into a loud whoop of glee and success. He quickly remembers the problem with using up oxygen and goes silent, but he is no less pleased with himself. _I knew it! I freakin’ knew it!_ But the best part is when he opens the final file, and it turns out to be the Ancient equivalent of a troubleshooting manual. Issue after issue, listed in considerable detail with full solutions and instructions. He could cry.

 

XxX

 

It’s a strange feeling, standing in the pod. Enclosed, but not threatening. Small, but not suffocating. An unsettling combination of safety and entrapment. As he looks out into the dark stasis hall, Eli can’t quite decide whether he likes the feeling or not; but either way he has no choice but to be in here sooner or later, so he might as well suck it up and get on with it. Just outside the pod doors, taking up the whole top step, is a lighter crate he managed to fly in from the storage room. On top of the crate sits his laptop, screen set on part of the troubleshooting file that explains causes and solutions for _System Failure Arising From Pod Damage_. The new lamp is considerably brighter than the dying glow he was left with yesterday, enabling him to see what he’s doing quite clearly. But the light has noticeably dimmed these past few hours, and Eli is beginning to be seriously concerned about the rate he’ll use up lamps. Brody’s box of tools is also outside, too big to fit in here with him – but from the sound of it, he may not need any equipment just yet. According to the slowly-translated text, system failure can result from physical damage to one, several, or all of three places. Firstly, the door. It won’t close if the glass has sustained even the slightest injury, due to the extreme danger to the user if the glass were to break completely during stasis. Eli has checked the door to his pod thoroughly, however, and there are no issues there. Perfect condition. Second of all, damage to the wiring connecting the individual interface to the pod. Faulty or degraded wiring could result in a command delivery failure, but he knows it can’t be that. If dodgy wiring was the problem then none of the actions he has carried out on the pod’s individual interface so far would have worked, but they have. He can successfully order a number of commands; it’s just when asked to activate stasis that the system fails, the same as when he tries with the main interface. Which means there is only one possible explanation. Damage to the core plate.

 

Made from erellium, a substance previously unknown to Eli, the plate is located deep in the back of the pod and is not only responsible for the wave of energy that ‘freezes’ the user, but also keeping the user alive while they are in this state. In short, it is the heart of the pod technology, despite being no bigger than a postcard. Erellium, however, is incredibly dangerous. Highly conductive, the metal in its liquid form must be kept away from all open sources of power or energy to prevent short-outs, shutdowns, and even explosions. Once subjected to considerably cold temperatures the erellium solidifies, becoming far safer but no less conductive. Two large cables clamped onto either end of the rectangular plate input a carefully monitored amount of power, whilst smaller cables clamped along the edges take the power out of the plate and on to the important components that oversee time-length, body condition and health, and a unique kind of life support. It all sounds well and good – but the solidification of the erellium can sometimes render the plates weaker than they should be, and an uncontrolled surge of power – even in installation testing or initial start-up – would be more than enough to tear a hole or create a crack in the plate. And unless the core plate is in working order, stasis can’t be activated. So the obvious thing that he must do first, of course, is get to the plate inside the pod and study any damage that has been sustained.

 

Eli peers carefully at the back wall of the pod, holding the lamp close. Although the wall appears smooth and plain save for the decorative swirl, according to the initial diagram there should be a hidden panel somewhere, the first protective layer of many. He tentatively reaches out a hand, pressing it against the centre of the wall at waist-height like the diagram depicts, and moves to the right. His hand has barely moved three inches when his fingertips suddenly press down on something solid, but moveable. Glancing over his shoulder at the diagram on the screen, Eli confirms it as the panel. So he turns back to the wall, presses down sharply and then removes his hand, just as a hiss and a beep signal the opening of the panel as it moves abruptly out of the wall and slides to the left. A rectangular space roughly ten inches by ten inches in size is left behind, but all it reveals is a plain sheet of silver metal, set an inch into the wall and stretching from edge to edge, secured with numerous odd-looking bolts. Eli stands and stares at it for a few moments, having half-expected a frightening tangle of Ancient wiring. A little thrown, he turns back to the laptop, setting the lamp down on the floor and scrolling further on through the file. He’s met with several more diagrams, indicating that this metal sheet is the first layer of five; each is different, a separate way of protecting the plate from external damage or interference. And all completely ineffective against problems caused from within. He has to hand it to the Ancients – their engineering is definitely....unique. But there’s no time to sit around and admire it. Confident as he feels, Eli doesn’t exactly have all the time in the world. _Better make a start_ , he decides, and after studying the tiny Ancient bolts for several moments more he edges out of the pod and around the crate, to rummage through Brody’s box of tools while he records an update on the kino.

 

XxX

 

It takes him an unexpectedly long time to remove the first layer. The bolts are so small and so fiddly, and he’s working with tools made for Earth machines. His speed isn’t aided by the fact that he has to get up and go in search of a small tin to put the bolts in as he wheedles them out of the metal. Prising the sheet out of the space with some difficulty, weighing the light material in his hands, a small knot begins to tie itself in his stomach as he studies the next layer he has revealed: a whole panel of intricate electronics, something like a computer chip from back on Earth. It’s smaller than the metal sheet, secured by four bolts in the centre. Six or seven cables connect to sockets on the panel, and when Eli traces their origin with his eyes he realises they all run into the inch-deep walls of the space, into the internal structure of the back wall itself. _It’s fine_ , he tells himself. _Totally fine. You can work this_. _Just follow the instructions_. Trying to suppress the feeling of uncertainty this task is creating in him, Eli turns around and leans the first layer against the crate behind him to keep it out of the way. But when he lifts his gaze to his laptop, the screen is a resolute, ominous black. “Oh no,” he breathes, his heart plummeting southwards. “Oh _no_.” Grabbing his laptop, Eli taps desperately on the keys, pressing the start button and running his fingertips over the touchpad. No result. The battery is completely dead. “You can’t be _serious_!?” he demands of the machine, eyebrows drawing together in concern and disbelief, but his efforts are useless. His laptop is dead, the already depleted battery having drained much faster than he’d anticipated, and the information is gone.

 

XxX

 

He feels like such a fool. He should have worked faster, should have written some of the information down, should have done _something_ – because now he’s really, truly in trouble. He can keep on taking the pod apart, sure, but even if he manages to get to the source of the problem without damaging the machine even more in the process, he has no idea how to fix it whatsoever. It’s late. Maybe, Eli figures, some dinner and some rest will help him think of a solution. Figures. Hopes. Even as he lies awake in his bunk in the dark, waiting for sleep to take him, Eli is painfully aware of how eleven days is about to become ten days, and how quickly that ten will become zero.

 

XxX

 

‘Morning’ finds Eli already up and in the stasis hall, exploring Rush’s desktop with renewed determination. Cracking the password was no problem; he is, after all, the Boy Genius. Knowing that he doesn’t have the option to just sit around and feel like an idiot, Eli reminds himself of Rush’s words – _“You do have tremendous potential.” –_ and summons all of his slowly growing self-confidence. Yeah, he messed up. Pretty bad. And he’s costing himself more precious time. But he’s Eli Wallace, Math Boy: the Machiavellian scientist Dr Nicholas _Rush_ has faith in him, and didn’t Eli tell Colonel Young that he’s _smarter_ than Rush? He made a mistake, but he can fix it.

 

The scientist has always been secretive about his work, what it is that he gets up to on this laptop in his spare time; and whenever they encounter any kind of problem, whether it’s something to do with their own work or an alien attack on the ship, 99 times out of 100 Rush will be there with an answer. A coincidence? Eli is starting to think not. Despite having previously apologised to Rush on kino, Eli’s guilt is minimal as he snoops through the older man’s files, desperately searching for anything that might be of use. He simply can’t turn the mainframe computer on, to retrieve the manual and the solutions that way. The drain on power would eat considerably into his remaining time, and he can’t afford that. For all he knows, he could require every second he has left to carry out the plate repairs in time. Every single second. And if the way to save his life is anywhere attainable on this ship, it will be here, on Rush’s computer.

 

The first few folders he checks look promising, all coming under the umbrella of “ _Ancient Tech_ ”; he reads through every file, taking care not to miss anything, but in the end they’re useless. Detailed reports on the Stargate, the bridge, the infirmary, even the toilets. Nothing about the stasis pods. Eli’s not too surprised. The pods are such a relatively recent discovery, he knows he’s taking a chance by hoping that there’ll be any information about them at all. Continuing his search, he makes sure to stay away from anything that looks personal. He knows very little of Rush’s private life, his life Before This, but he knows that the man has kept it to himself for his own reasons, and Eli respects that. Had his alternate self not revealed his mother’s illness on one of the abandoned kinos all those months ago, he doesn’t doubt that he wouldn’t have told anyone for a while longer. If he ever told anyone at all. Apart from Ginn – that’s a no-brainer. If they’d had the time, he’d have told her before her apparent death. As it was he made do with their sharing sessions, explaining his mom’s condition and his father’s leaving to the hologram of the woman he loves, and smiling sadly when the story and her inability to physically comfort him had made her upset. She hadn’t cried, though. The only tear he’s ever seen her shed was at their second goodbye, the memory of it making his heart feel heavy and yet empty in his chest. Ginn was – _is_ – always so brave. So strong in the face of all troubles. She’s counting on him to fix this pod, to be here in three years’ time to work out how to put her into a body. If she were able to see what’s happening, she would believe in him. And that thought makes Eli believe in himself just a little bit more.

 

He’s still giving himself an internal pep talk when he hovers the cursor over a folder intriguingly named, “ _In Case Of Emergency_.” This instantly prods Eli’s curiosity. _Sounds ominous. What could Rush possibly have had planned for an ‘emergency’?_ Thoroughly interested now, Eli double-taps and opens the folder. Inside are nine rather large files. Hopeful, he moves to open the first one, when the name of one of the other files catches his eye. For a moment or so, Eli just looks at it. Blinks. Closes his eyes. Shakes his head comically. Looks again. _It can’t be_ , he thinks. _It can’t be the same one_. He double-taps a second time with an almost amusing amount of caution, certain that his eyes are playing tricks on him, waiting for the file to open and prove that he’s starting to lose it. Seconds later, the file loads. He scrolls down, down, down. Stops at the right page. Reads the title. Re-reads it. A long, long minute passes, and all he can do is just sit and stare at the words on his screen. _System Failure Arising From Pod Damage_. It’s the same file. _It’s the same goddamn file_. Eli continues scrolling, revealing the diagrams of the pod structure, how to reach the core plate, and – _thank you, oh, Christ, thank you universe! –_ the blessed instructions on how to repair any damage. It’s all here, right in front of him. This time, Eli almost does cry. _Well done, you moronic genius!_ he congratulates himself as he grins, unable to suppress a sigh of immense relief. _You found it. You did it, you lucky son of a gun._

 

The feeling of success is short-lived, however. He checks the remaining battery life, finds that it’s worryingly low, and frantically dashes off to find some of Brody’s homemade paper and a pencil. By the time he returns, scrambling to note down the remaining instructions as quickly as he can, a thought has already begun to germinate in his mind. Rush didn’t use his laptop at all on that last day before he went into stasis. He put it into storage before they knew there was any further problem with the last pod, and that’s where it had stayed until Eli retrieved it. Even if he had used the machine, he couldn’t have transferred anything from the mainframe archives on that final day; power only allowed for a single transfer, and that was Eli’s. It simply could not have been done, not without Eli or Young’s knowledge, even by Rush. Not on that last day.....

 

_....Okay, let’s leave it for now. Let’s go......_

_....Given recent events it may be wise to check over the ship’s data in this compartment before proceeding...._

_....The biggest discovery aboard this ship since the bridge and now we’re supposed to ignore it because Rush says so?_

It hits him, then, realisation crashing down on his already overloaded brain like a tidal wave. Rush knew. Rush knew about the stasis pods. Eli goes back to the folder and right-clicks on the file. The download date is just over a month ago. The relief evaporates, in its place seeping in a cold, clammy wisp of understanding. Rush had known about the pods for _a month_. A whole month and he had said nothing, done nothing, kept it to himself – that’s why he had been so insistent that Brody and Eli not explore the stasis hall. Not because it might be dangerous for them, no, but because it posed a problem for his personal plans. Their stumbling across his private discovery had ruined his secret, though he obviously thought they wouldn’t find it. What the hell would he have done, had the two of them not crashed the party? And then, as if this knowledge hasn’t already made Eli’s navel twist with betrayal, he realises something that makes the bottom drop out of his stomach and a sick feeling claw its way up his throat: Rush knew what was wrong with the pod. Rush knew how to fix the problem, when Eli volunteered to stay behind. Rush knew how to save his life.

 

_But he didn’t._

XxX

 

Sleep doesn’t come too easily after that.

 

XxX

 

Taking the pod apart requires an intense amount of concentration; the further Eli gets into the internal structure the smaller the pieces become, the more fragile, and before long he has a collection of small pots and boxes surrounding him, filled with the various different delicate components. It’s surprisingly hard work, and he soon becomes so absorbed that he stops noticing the passage of time. He’s so focused on what he’s doing that for a little while he forgets where he is, forgets _why_ he has to do this, forgets what the consequences will be if he fails.

 

It’s late, very late: not that differentiating between night and day matters much to him anymore. He’s trying to jimmy a tiny bolt loose with a screwdriver that was clearly not meant for Ancient machinery, attempting to ease the tip of the tool under the bolt. His left index finger and thumb have been failing to get a grip on the thing for ten long minutes, but he refuses to give up. After a few minutes longer he finally manages to slip the tip under the edge of the bolt, gaining leverage, feeling like he might just be able to make progress now – and then the screwdriver slips, the tip losing its traction on the surface of the bolt, and jerks forwards to lodge itself in Eli’s finger.

 

Immediately he drops the tool as if it were red hot, letting it clatter to the floor as he leaps up from his seat on the crate and yelps in an unpleasant combination of pain and surprise. For several minutes or so he can’t even speak, clutching his injured finger to his chest and trying to stem the flow of blood with his other hand, doubling over every few seconds in a surge of agony. To make matters even worse he nearly stumbles over his own laptop on the floor, leading him to accidentally kick the foot of the main stasis interface. Crying out a second time, he ends up backing into a corner away from other possible sources of injury, his face screwed up against the pain. When at long last it subsides enough for him to form coherent words, the first thing Eli blurts out is, “Son of a _bitch_!” and quickly follows it up with a slew of other loud curses as he straightens up, sucking in a shaky breath. Watery-eyed, he examines the wound as closely as possible in the limited light. It’s not deep, but it stings enough to bring tears to his eyes, and is bleeding profusely; his shirt is splotched with numerous dark stains, right across _You Are Here_ , and that makes him curse again because now his favourite shirt – and really his _only_ shirt – is ruined. “Damn it,” he breathes into the shadows. “Damn it.” Blood continues to ooze down his finger from under his right thumb. The sight of it makes his stomach roll uncomfortably. Throwing one last glare at the bloodied screwdriver on the floor, Eli snatches the lamp from next to his laptop and limps off in search of the infirmary and a band-aid.

 

XxX

 

Sometimes, he’ll lose himself in his thoughts entirely. When he does, more often than not he ends up thinking of Ginn. He’ll remember her smile, her voice, her touch. He’ll remember the fact that she loves him, and he’ll smile brightly to himself as he eats alone in the dark mess hall at the usual table. He’ll remember that she is still alive, her consciousness stored in _Destiny_ ’s computer, away from harm. One day he’ll restore her to a body. One day they can be together, properly; she can come back to Earth with him when they get home, meet his mother, see his world. And even if they don’t get back to Earth soon, it doesn’t matter. He will gladly spend years more on board this ship if he’ll have Ginn to share it with. It’s these thoughts that really give him belief, that make him feel confident in his ability to survive this. These are the thoughts he holds onto as he works on the pod, one piece at a time. These are the thoughts that give him hope.

 

XxX

 

He has nine days left to live when he drops the last bolt into the correct tin with a clatter, and eases the fifth metal layer out from the space. 216 hours and counting when Eli finally lays eyes on the small Ancient core plate, and the inch-wide fracture that cuts across the middle.

 

XxX

 

For the first real time in his life, Eli wishes he’d been more into cars and building things than comic books and _Star Trek_ growing up – because now, as he wandersthe dark, empty corridors of _Destiny_ and peers at pages of scribbled notes and roughly-sketched diagrams, he feels just a little out of his depth. It’s one thing to have successfully gotten to the point of the damage to the stasis pod, but it’s another thing entirely to successfully repair that damage. Although the instructions tell him what to do, Eli wishes he at least had some experience with this stuff. And although the man’s knowledge of the Ancient tech on this ship is limited to just a year of tinkering, Eli wishes he’d paid more attention to Brody when he’d discussed his creations. According to the careful notes he took from the file on Rush’s laptop the fracture in the plate needs to be refilled with pure erellium. There’s a small stock of erellium bars stowed in a special box in a cabinet; the cabinet is in what appears to be a kind of repairs bay, which is located in one of the as yet unexplored areas of the ship. But it’s not as simple as that. The erellium has to be melted down into liquid form using a certain heating tool, and then applied one single drop at a time inside the fracture with an applicator. After every two to four drops the erellium has to be solidified, for which he needs a specific cooling press, to be held against the fracture immediately for thirty seconds. The energy wave from the press will hold the liquid erellium static until it solidifies, preventing it from just running out of the fracture again. To power the press he’ll need two energy cells from another box. And then, after all that, he’ll have to leave the erellium to properly set for twenty minutes before he can even attempt to add the next few drops. Everything he requires should be in the repairs bay. If only he could find it.

 

The barely legible map he scrawled has led him into unknown sections of _Destiny_ , so he figures he must be going in the right direction, but Eli is beginning to think he’s gotten himself hopelessly lost with his useless drawing. It can’t have been too long since he set off from the stasis hall, yet it still feels like an eternity. He left behind the recognisable corridors long ago, and is now far beyond even those doors marked with chalk by the soldiers who checked the compartments for damage. “Well done, Eli,” he mutters to himself in the darkness. “You’re totally gonna fix the damn pod like this.” He is about to turn around to try and find his way back when he comes upon the first doorway in a good minute or so, and he stops to throw an exasperated last glance at his poor excuse for a map. _Door located on my left-hand side? Check. Turn off to the right up ahead?_ Eli looks quickly up and lifts his lamp as high as he can. If he squints, he can just make out a right-hand turn not ten feet in front of him. Raising his eyebrows in surprise, he returns to the paper. _Check. A corridor intersection just behind?_ He doesn’t need to turn to remember that the corridors do intersect just behind him, providing both a left and right turn off. _Well,_ he thinks to himself as a pleased smile begins to appear on his face, _maybe I’m not so lost after all._ Eli steps up to the door and presses the control on the wall, hoping that the universe will have cut him some slack and kept the repairs bay intact and undamaged, and his prayers are answered when the door opens onto a reasonably-sized room full of crates, shelves, workstations and strange tech. There is a large, metal cabinet just visible against the far wall. _Bingo_.

 

XxX

 

Eli can only assume that erellium must have been of some value once upon a time. Energy cells, too, because the boxes are equipped with security interfaces and require individual numerical codes to open them. He shuffles through his notes to find them, and after some further searching around the place manages to gather together everything he needs. He returns to the stasis hall half an hour after he left, carrying an assortment of objects in a small crate: one erellium bar, an inch thick but barely ten centimetres in length; two thin, square energy cells that are made out of a glimmering white crystal and aren’t even half the size of his palm; the applicator, a thin metal rod with a carved handle and curved tip, almost like a tiny spoon, to apply the drops; a delicate-looking metal bowl with a crystal set into the side, and a soft mat for it to sit on, made out of a material Eli can’t name; and the cooling press, a strange-looking device. The energy cells slot into the surface of a centimetre-thick plate, secured by tiny catches. This side is held against the fracture, whilst a large handle protrudes from the other side, just below a selection of several small keys.

 

The update Eli records on the kino is more of a means to buy time than an actual explanation for the documentary. He’s intimidated, to say the least. He’s no engineer, and if he messes this up – and there is a _lot_ here that he can mess up – then it could all be over for him. Nonetheless, he can’t afford to just sit around and do nothing. He spends an hour just getting ready; fumbling with the fragile energy cells to get them into the press, figuring out which key will turn the tool on and cause the cells to glow an eerie blue in the darkness. He taps in vain on the crystal of the bowl, eventually just setting it down on the mat and placing an erellium bar inside, with the intention of taking a break. He comes back from the mess with some water less than ten minutes later, and finds the crystal glowing blue, the erellium _slo-w-l-y_ beginning to melt.

 

XxX

 

The first time Eli tries to transfer a large drop of liquid erellium with the applicator, he lifts it halfway to the fracture – and then yelps as it drops from the end of the rod and, still hot, burns a neat, hissing hole in the knee of his jeans.

 

XxX

 

The fourth time, he applies it carefully within the fracture, and smiles.


	2. Part Two: Emptiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, due to personal reasons I was unable to get this up yesterday. But here it is - better late than never! The third and final part of 'Echo', entitled 'Fate', will still be up on Monday 22nd April as planned! Flashbacks and thoughts are in italics. As always, any feedback is much appreciated! Hope you enjoy :)

 

xxxx

**Stargate Universe: Echo**

Part Two: _Emptiness._

xxxx

x

Once he gets the hang of it, Eli works through the melted metal surprisingly fast. So off he sets to the repairs bay, and this time he takes more than just one erellium bar from the box. He’s nearly back to the stasis hall when it happens: juggling papers and erellium and the lamp, one of the bars slips from his grasp and hurtles to the ground. The sharp _smash_ when it hits the floor makes him shudder and recoil, cringing and squeezing his eyes shut against the noise as it echoes throughout the corridors of the sleeping ship, on and on. Only when the echoes have finally faded away does Eli reluctantly open one eye to look down at his feet. But instead of shattering into tiny fragments like he expected, he finds the erellium bar completely intact, whole and seemingly unharmed. Eli lets out a sigh of something like relief. Even if it _had_ broken, he would’ve scrambled around on the floor in the shadows to gather the pieces. He can’t afford to waste any of it. As it is, he shifts all the items he is trying to carry into a more secure grip before stooping to pick the little bar up off the floor, scrutinising it as best he can. Not a dent or a chip. Not even so much as a scratch. In fact, he notes as he lays eyes on the new scuff-mark on the floor, it seems _Destiny_ actually took the most damage. This thought makes him chuckle aloud to himself. Just once, just briefly. But the sound of his laughter carries too, loud and repetitive, and Eli immediately stills. When the echoes disappear, the silence that engulfs him is suffocating. _Creepy_ , he thinks. _Seriously creepy shit_. He realises, then, just how much noise he really makes as he goes about the ship. Footsteps, dropping stuff, hauling things around, speaking, laughing. Even the sound of his _breathing_ seems amplified to deafening levels. Talk about drawing attention to himself. If there _was_ anything else awake on board _Destiny_ with him, it would have no trouble tracking his noisy, clumsy ass down. _Depending on how well it can see in the dark_ , he mentally adds before he can stop himself, and that thought is just a little too much for his imagination. In total darkness save for the small circle of weak light provided by the lamp, Eli all of a sudden feels very uncomfortable. Very exposed. Very vulnerable. With such limited visibility anything could creep up on him from behind, and he wouldn’t know a thing about it until it was too late. Then the unsettling sensation of eyes on him begins to form in the pit of his stomach, and the hair stands up on the back of Eli’s neck.

 

XxX

 

What scares him most is that, even when he retreats to the slightly-comforting familiarity of the stasis hall, the feeling doesn’t go away.

 

XxX

 

He has seven days left to live. He sleeps little, eats on the go; he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop. And soon Eli becomes so focused, so absorbed in what he has to do that he starts to suppress the need for sleep. He fights the itch behind his eyes, the ache in his empty stomach. He forgets that he’s supposed to eat. Until eventually one night – morning, afternoon, evening – he’s applying the last of this batch of erellium to the plate and realises that he’s smearing it everywhere instead of in neat, careful drops inside the fracture. Drawing in a long, deep breath, Eli carefully sets the applicator down with the end in the erellium bowl. Slowly, he gets to his feet, fighting an unexpected rush of nausea and wooziness that hits him as soon as he straightens up. The hands he raises to steady himself are trembling violently, his face ghostly pale in the reflection from the pod glass. Eli lets out a shaky, not-quite-genuine laugh, and says to the surrounding silence, “Low blood sugar is definitely _not_ my friend.”

 

XxX

 

When he has some food in his system, the shaking stops and Eli feels a little better. He has lost all sense of time, of day or night and of the hours as they roll by; the only reference he has left is the timer that is counting down his rapidly closing two-week window from its position on top of the control panel. _Tick, tick, tick_ one second after another the time is stolen out from underneath him as he works diligently on repairing the plate, checking and double-checking the diagrams and instructions almost obsessively. The pressure is near-suffocating now, weighing down on him like an iron blanket so heavy he feels he’ll need all three years of the sleep in stasis. Eli is exhausted, and not just physically; the sheer relief that fills him whenever he thinks of finishing the repairs and joining the rest of the crew in stasis is what he clings onto to keep himself going. Tiny amount after tiny amount Eli applies the molten erellium to the fracture in the core plate, grateful for the absence of intricate wiring, and hardens the metal after every application with the cooling press. It’s painstaking and the twenty minute waits in-between applications give him too much time to think.

 

And then, when he’s almost finished, the energy cells in the press give one final surge and die, the glowing blue lights abruptly going out. Eli cautiously removes the press from the plate and stares at it in confusion and surprise. No longer held static by the energy field of the press, the drops he just patiently applied immediately re-liquefy, and small rivulets of gold begin to run out of the fracture and down the side of the plate; noticing the molten erellium heading straight for the exposed cables below the plate, the only thing Eli can do is throw himself forward and use the hem of his ruined shirt to catch the conductive liquid – should it come into contact with any source of energy other than the carefully controlled input to the plate, once turned on the pod could potentially not just short-out, but explode. Looking down, Eli checks that he has definitely caught all of the erellium before he allows himself to sit back and let out a sigh of something somewhere between relief and frustration. Slowly he reaches down to the floor and picks up the cooling press; inspecting it closely for damage, and wishing he hadn’t dropped it so carelessly in his haste to catch the erellium, Eli finally notices the darkened energy cells and realises what must have happened. There’s no other option but to go and get more cells, and this knowledge makes Eli’s heart sink. The idea of venturing back out into the darkness beyond this stasis hall makes him uneasy, but there’s nothing for it. Somewhat reluctantly Eli gets to his feet, gazing forlornly down at the blood and erellium stains on his shirt. He’ll have to go: he can’t finish the plate repairs without the press, and he’s nearly there.

 

It’s a ten minute amble to the repairs bay; Eli turns it into nearly twenty, edging slowly along the corridors and peering round corners, the lamp held high to cast light into suspicious nooks and crannies. He has the press tucked under his arm, the paper with the box security code on it in his other hand. It makes him uncomfortable, the way his footsteps echo, the way his breathing seems harsh and loud. He curses himself for having let his mind get carried away before, imagining the sensation of eyes on him that now refuses to be shaken off. Halfway there, he spots his own reflection in a shining pipe on the wall and starts, nearly dropping the press and paper in the process. For a full minute he can only stand in place, clutching at his racing heart, and curse under his breath. The more he calms down, the more of an idiot he feels. “Stop being such a pansy,” he admonishes himself – the words carry along the hallway, and although he manages not to look around nervously he lowers his voice to a whisper. “Greer would smack you upside the head if he could see you now,” he breathes, annoyed at his own needless caution. “You’re alone. Just you. Get it together.” Straightening up, Eli takes a deep breath and lets it out sharply, decisively. _Don’t have time to mess around. Hurry up._ He walks the rest of the way at normal speed and makes it in one piece, unsuccessfully trying to ignore the lingering feeling of being watched.

 

The repairs bay is exactly how he left it, full of as yet unexamined technology and mysterious objects. He crosses the room to the metal cabinet against the wall, cringing at the way the doors scream as he opens them. Pulling the correct box from the top shelf, Eli looks at his notes and taps the code into the box’s security interface. The status light turns green and he pops the lid, and there they are: five neat rows of ready-to-install energy cells, with two empty slots for the ones he used earlier. Smiling tiredly to himself, Eli takes the box over to a nearby table and sets it next to the press and the lamp, getting to work on prising the used cells out of their socket. It’s a frustrating task and his injured finger gives an unpleasant throb every now and then, as if in reminder of his wound, but eventually he has the cells stacked out of the way ready to dispose of. Eli picks the first new cell from the box and, after a few minutes of fiddling about with the little catches, slides it into place with relative ease. It’s as he selects the second cell that he turns to his right, to cast more light on what he’s doing, and that’s when he sees it: a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, a blur in his peripheral vision that darts past the doorway, just at the edge of the light. Startled, Eli’s heart gives a huge, terrified leap in his chest as he spins to face the door in fright and surprise. The energy cell slips from his fingers and shatters like glass on the floor. The solidifying press thuds heavily onto the table as he throws his hand back and grabs frantically for the lamp, his eyes struggling to make sense of the semi-darkness before him. He swings the lamp up with hands that shake, his pulse thundering in his ears, throwing just a little more light out into the corridor – but nothing’s there now. Just an empty hallway. Eli strains to listen for any noise, the slightest sound, the smallest movement; but nothing. Whatever it was is gone. “Don’t be an idiot,” he murmurs, “There’s _nothing_ there. You’re imagining things.” He sounds firm, speaks confidently as if he’s certain. He feels none of it. Eli reminds himself that he is alone. Completely, totally, and utterly _alone_ on this ship in the middle of the universe, billions of lightyears from home – and then that thought begins to scare him just as much as the idea of not being the only soul awake on board the _Destiny_.

 

Swallowing nervously, a full, agonising minute passes before he dares to tear his eyes away from the door; and when he does, it’s to gaze in horror at the lamp in his hands as it begins to flicker. “No, no no no,” he breathes, jostling it a little, a tendril of panic obvious in his voice. “Don’t go out. Don’t go out, not here, not yet.” Throwing one last fearful glance at the corridor Eli turns back to the table, broken crystal crunching beneath his feet. He takes another cell from the box, sets the lamp down and starts trying to slip the cell into the press socket. Haste allows him to succeed on the first attempt. Holding in a sigh of relief, he closes the box and puts it back in the cabinet, a cold shiver racing up his spine at the noise of the doors as they close. He pauses only to gather his things and sweep the crystal shards under the table with his foot before leaving just a little too quickly.

 

XxX

 

Eli Wallace has never been particularly afraid of the dark, but it occurs to him now that maybe he should be.

 

XxX

 

Then there’s that moment, that wonderful, hope-restoring moment when he takes the press away from the plate and reveals a smooth, golden surface of erellium, a little brighter than the rest of the plate, but perfect. Flawless. And after recording an ecstatic kino update, making sure to get a good close-up of the newly repaired pod – for the benefit of his documentary and his pride – Eli laughs his way to the o-deck to wait out the twenty minutes it will take for the erellium to properly set. He laughs until joy and relief and a note of hysteria are echoing throughout _Destiny_ ’s corridors for the first time in longer than he can remember.

 

XxX

 

Part of him just wants to get the pod put back together as quickly as possible, but Eli knows he can’t afford to make any mistakes. Not now that he’s so close. So he patiently reassembles the layers of plate protection, re-plugging cables, taking care with the tiny bolts so as not to damage or lose them. Sweet relief burns his heart, his head swimming with pure elation, and he plays that shining moment of success over and over and over in his mind. Rush had said he would, Young had said he would – he told himself so many times that he could do this, could fix the pod. Now that he has, the feelings that fill him are so different from what he expected. Eli feels he couldn’t sleep a wink if he tried, light as a feather and completely revitalised; a drowning man that has finally been allowed to come up for air. But most of all, more than any emotion he is experiencing, is the way he feels about himself. For the first time in his life, he feels confident. He feels capable. So when he at last slides the hidden panel back into place with a soft hiss of movement, and practically beams into the kino as he records his victorious, temporary goodbye, Eli feels no fear. The chilling sensation of being watched no longer lingers around him, the heavy iron blanket of worry lifted from his heart. His concern had been unwarranted in the end, just like the needless fright that was growing inside him, because he is here, he is successful, and he is going to live.

 

XxX

 

After the recording Eli sets the kino, panel and timer down on the main stasis interface; there he’ll be able to easily retrieve them as soon as he wakes from stasis alongside the rest of the crew in three years’ time. He tidies up, returning all of the equipment to either the repairs bay or Brody’s box of tools, floating the box back to the closet on the board and kinos. All the other crates and tins and pots are also returned; and then when he is finally faced with a clean and clear room, and the pleasant ache of physical exertion in his bones, Eli knows he is ready. He wanders slowly down the rows of sleeping faces, his closest friends, pausing for a few seconds every now and then. TJ. Camile. Ron. Chloe. Matt. He came so close to losing them, losing everything. He swears he’ll never take any of it for granted ever again. A slight pause in front of his own pod, too, but only to smile lightly before he moves on to the main interface. He just has to put the pod’s system back online, activate the stasis program from one of the interfaces, and that will be it. Eli recalls shimmering FTL colours, the blinding light of a gas giant, hysterical laughter fits in the mess hall, smiles and jokes and playful jibes. He unearths all the happiness and amazement he can from his memory while he taps keys and isolates his pod from the others. He wants something _good_ and _real_ to hold onto, to be his last thought as he ‘freezes’. Any memory, Eli tells himself as he presses the button to bring the pod back online, from this world they have created on _Destiny_ will be enough.

 

But then a sharp, tearing blare of noise ruptures the silence, clawing at his eardrums and rattling him to the core, and startling flashes and bursts of red light up his screen like solar flares, and the bottom falls out of that world and he’s tumbling, tumbling, tumbling......

 

XxX

 

“ _No._ ” It’s the only thing he can say, the only thing he can think. The single word, the lone syllable that spells out his fate. “ _No_ , no no no _no_.” He punches keys at random and stares at the activity on the interface screen with wide eyes that don’t understand what they are seeing, can’t comprehend, until finally the jagged _BLEEEE! BLEEEEE! BLEEEEE!_ is abruptly cut off. Silence is restored to _Destiny_ ’s halls and the horror on his screen disappears. His ears are ringing. “No,” he whispers again, barely able to hear himself, because that isn’t what’s supposed to happen. The pod’s system should come back online within a few seconds, and then the little pod icon on his screen is meant to turn emerald in colour, just like the others. Instead the icon has remained colourless, indicating that it’s still offline. He must have done something wrong. So he runs through the steps, presses the correct button a second time – and when the howl of the siren splinters the air, Eli knows he’s in serious trouble.

 

XxX

 

The kino stares back at him from its perch on top of the control panel in Eli’s quarters, silent, waiting. Waiting for him speak, to do something other than just sit here and look into the camera without saying a word. He pressed the record key a full minute ago, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to talk. Not yet. Besides, what would he say? What can he possibly tell the crew that would adequately explain this mess he has gotten himself into? After ninety-nine seconds of silence, Eli hits the stop button.

 

XxX

 

 _This can’t be happening_. Hours of trying and still nothing, nothing at all. _It can’t be happening_. He’s pushed every key, every command, every option available to him – but there is only one way to put his pod back online, and each time he tries that he’s rewarded with violent noise and ominous text that tells him, _Command Not Recognised. ACCESS DENIED._ What worries him most is that he doesn’t seem to be able to do much else with the interface. He can’t alter anything, make changes, can’t even look at the data for the other pods. None of his other commands provoke any reaction at all, and he realises with a slight stab of panic in his gut what _Destiny_ has done. She’s shut him out of the main interface. “Why?!” he demands of the ship, looking around the empty room as if expecting to see a physical entity. “ _Why would you even do that?!_ ” He’s shouting more out of fear than anger, because he knows she wouldn’t have done such a thing without good reason; which means that _he_ must have made a mistake somewhere. Eli did something to provoke this. Maybe he didn’t realise it at the time, maybe he didn’t notice or know that what he was doing would worry _Destiny_ , but none of that even matters because it all still means the same thing. It means he has no idea what to do. It means he’s lost control.

 

XxX

 

Eli feels so _old_ as he stands here in the empty mess hall, his lamp glowing faintly beside him from the science team’s table. Old and tired, like a tyre worn down to bare steel. Exhausted. Useless. The effect is clear on his face in the paleness of his skin, the permanent crease of his brow, the vacant look in his eyes. As he stares into the recording kino, Eli is beginning to feel more lost than ever before. “It’s times like this,” he tells the device quietly, his voice hoarse from the past few hours of silence and thirst, “when I ask myself....what would Picard do?” He smiles, a weak, terrible ghost of a grin, pretending for just a moment, just until he stops recording, that everything is not as bad as it seems. That he has this under control. That he doesn’t forget to eat and drink and sleep. That he isn’t going to die in five days. But his efforts are wasted. The joke falls flat, his fake smile slipping off with it like ice out of fingertips. There’s no point in even trying to keep up an act, because it’s not okay, it’s not funny, and no matter how much he wishes he could there is just no way to make light of this situation. Eli doesn’t know what to do this time. All his earlier feelings seem stupid and arrogant now; the laughter, the joy, the self-congratulation. He fixes one stasis pod and all of a sudden that makes him a genius? He tells Colonel Young that he’s smarter than Rush, and that makes it true? He’s been childish and silly and got way ahead of himself, had thought too much of his own abilities, and now he’s paying the ultimate price. Because that’s all he is, a fool and a failure, a naive boy who can do nothing but stand in the dark and make silly jokes while he waits for it all to be over. His father was right, when he said those things, slurred them in one of his last drunken rants at his son: the root of Eli’s damaged confidence, his struggle to believe in himself. It’s been twelve years, but those words are just as crystal clear as the day he heard them, seeping in from the depths of his memory to torture him. And then he shakes himself, pushing the memories back, wondering what the hell he’s doing. Those words aren’t true. He won’t let them be. He can still do this.

 

XxX

 

There must be some way to get _Destiny_ to let him back into the interface. There must be _something_ – and, just like before, he knows where the answer would be. Eli hurries along the corridors to the closet, hating the way his footsteps seem to crash, that he can barely see where he’s going. He despises the darkness for the monsters he imagines it could hide, but he has no time for that now. He practically bursts through the door when he finally finds it, immediately tripping over a crate in typical fashion and dropping the lamp. It hits the floor with an audible _crack!_ but by some miracle doesn’t go out completely. In his haste Eli stumbles on in the sporadic flickers of weak light, not even bothering to pick up the damaged item, his eyes firmly fixed on the tall shelf on the other side of the room. It takes only a few more trips and withheld curses before he’s there and grappling for the familiar shape of Rush’s laptop in the near-darkness. If anything, this ordeal has given him a serious insight into just how far the older scientist is willing to go to save his own skin, just how much he would be willing to keep secret from the rest of the crew. Eli still feels physically sick whenever he considers the idea that Rush might have intended for him to die. Sure, they may not get along perfectly and they’ve had a fair few clashes in recent months; but the man is his mentor, his teacher, and by some sort of description his friend. Eli can’t bear the thought that Rush might want him out of the picture, especially when there’s so many reasons why he should.

 

His fingers grab at nameless items, the case of communication stones, a stack of loose papers that come raining down on him: and then they finally close around a solid, rectangular mass, and he almost sighs with relief. He was, after all, he thinks to himself as he pulls the laptop from the shelf, the one who quarantined Amanda Perry’s consciousness. Granted he’d had to do it to save Rush’s life. _And_ , he adds just a little bitterly, _I lost Ginn in the process_. That and he’s the biggest threat to Rush’s role of resident genius. At least, in Rush’s opinion he probably is. Eli moves carefully over to a nearby crate and boots up the laptop, still ashamed of himself. If he really was what everyone else seems to think he is, he would know what to do. He’d have freaked out a lot less and within five minutes would have figured out what was wrong and fixed it. As it is, all he has is an interface he can only look at and the knowledge that _Destiny_ won’t let him reactivate the system. He doesn’t know how, or why, or what the solution is. Ironically enough, the best hope he has left of living is the one man who might just want him dead. The only comfort he can draw from his death is that, if Rush really did intend it, Colonel Young would probably kill him with his bare hands. And with that pleasant thought swirling uneasily around his mind, Eli begins to search Rush’s laptop for the second time.

 

Five minutes later, he notices that the flickering has died, and glances over his shoulder to find himself in total darkness save for the low light of the screen. He remembers the flashes in his peripheral vision, the intense feeling that there was someone or something watching him from close by in the impenetrable black, and goosepimples automatically break out on his skin. He stumbles and trips his way back to the stasis hall and a new lamp with a different kind of haste.

 

XxX

 

His eyes itch. His head hurts. His stomach is growling fiercely and he wants nothing more than to rest, close his eyes just for a minute and clear the fuzziness that has descended on his brain. But he ignores the exhaustion, and the hunger, and the thirst. He ignores it all because he has no time for that anymore. He has just over four days left and despite spending endless hours repeatedly trying the stasis interface and going through Rush’s files again and again, the time is passing _so quickly_. Soon it’ll run out altogether. So he ignores all of his needs to eat and drink and recharge and instead agonises over an answer; any kind of solution at all, he doesn’t care, he’ll try it. Because he’s tried _everything_ that he can think of. Eli goes over his notes for the millionth time, and he wonders what it’s like to die. He’s thought about it a lot since they got trapped here, and as he ponders whether or not it hurts, or if it’s just as quick and painless as going to sleep, he feels that familiar, dark, empty feeling consuming him slowly. _Like I was falling down a pitch black hole_. His own fear and dread flow in his veins like ice water, pulse like blood with every numbered beat of his heart. He’s not ready to die. He’s not _ready_.

 

Then he thinks of Senator Armstrong’s sacrifice. Corporal Gorman, torn to shreds by the alien bugs. The constant threat of starvation, the high likelihood that any day could be their last. The possibility that they might not ever return home. And what if he can’t restore Ginn to a body, can’t release her from quarantine? He thinks of Riley and all the suffering they have endured in the past year, every trial and near-death experience, and suddenly going to sleep doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

 

XxX

 

The laptop is useless. The notes are useless. His own stupid, _stupid_ brain is useless. Eli checks every file and tries every code, from the single digit ‘9’ to the last nine-digit sequence. He thinks back to every tight spot they’ve ever gotten into with _Destiny_ ,but they never encountered a problem like this. After Rush cracked the master code _Destiny_ let them take control for the most part. And before then, whenever she locked them out of something there was always a way around it. They could override her actions by using different commands and secondary routes, but he can’t do that this time. There are no other ways. No effect produced by any of his commands except the one that results in chaos. He has one screen to stare at, and that is all. So, because it’s the only thing he _can_ do, Eli presses the goddamn button yet again, and prays to whatever it is out there that it will work as he steels himself against the pending onslaught of noise.

 

The siren never comes. No high-pitched _BLEE! BLEE! BLEE!_ and no flashing red alerts. Instead he gets a short, quiet _beee_ , and a notification appears on his screen to tell him:

 

_ACCESS DENIED. AUTHORITY NOT RECOGNISED. COMMENCE LOCKOUT PROCEDURE._

 

Then the screen abruptly turns a resolute black, and Eli’s mouth drops open. “Oh, God, _no_ ,” he murmurs, pressing keys frantically. The screen remains black. “Please don’t do this!” The panel is silent, completely dead. “No, no, please!” he pleads, his voice wavering and sheer exhaustion making his knees shake beneath him. “ _You can’t!”_ The shout echoes loudly throughout the empty corridors and he’s openly addressingthe ship now, knowing she did this, knowing she can hear. His voice, suddenly so small and weak, breaks as he whispers, “You _can’t_.” _Destiny_ has shut the entire interface down. She has taken away his last option. And finally, knowing what this means, Eli Wallace gives in to his despair. He begins to cry.

 

XxX

 

He’s sitting on the stasis hall floor with his head in his hands when the lamp goes out, leaving him utterly blind in the deep black abyss of the ship, and he knows that he can’t do this.

 

XxX

 

He’s going to die. He’s going to die here on this ship, further from Earth than he ever could have imagined, and he’s going to die the one thing he was always terrified he would be: a failure. Even now, staring at the recording kino in his hands with 96 hours on the clock, he can still hear his father’s words echoing around his brain as if he’d heard them only yesterday. Words that Eli keeps so deeply buried inside himself that they have never been uttered to anyone else, not a single soul. Not Ginn. Not Riley. Not even his mom. As a kid he’d managed to convince himself that his father hadn’t meant those words, hadn’t believed them. That it wasn’t his father’s fault he’d yelled terrible, awful things at his only son. That it wasn’t his father’s fault he turned to drink and fits of alcohol-induced anger. But now? Now, Eli knows better. He knows that Jonathan Wallace turned to liquor because he was a coward, because he couldn’t handle the reality that he was faced with: a sick wife who would need his care, mounting medical bills he had no means of paying, and a son who in his eyes was weak and introverted, the polar opposite of himself. Eli knows now that it was entirely Jon Wallace’s fault. He knows now that his father had meant everything he said to his 14-year-old son. He believed every single syllable.

 

Here, at the very end, he _knows_ his father was right. And those words twist his empty stomach with shame, burn the back of his throat with self-disgust. He forces them down, back into that small part of his soul he has kept hidden from everyone else for so long, and swallows thickly. He is running out of time. He has to get his affairs in order. Eli holds the kino in trembling fingers, his final lamp just about illuminating his face from the workstation in front of him. He feels like a very different person to the one who sat on this stool, slept in that bunk, paced these quarters two weeks ago. So very, very different.

 

With a voice that is surprisingly steady even to his own ears, Eli speaks, and tells the kino something he never thought he would have to say. “This is the Last Will and Testament of Eli Wallace. The date....the date....I _think_ it’s September 1st. September 1st, 2010.” He sucks in a short breath, letting it out slowly and quietly. He’s never made a Will before. He has absolutely no idea what formal....stuff....would need to go in it. Figuring it would be better to include as much verification as possible, he continues, “I am Eli Wallace. I’m 26 years old. My parents are Marian and Jon....Jonathan Wallace.” Eli swallows again, pretending not to notice the way he stumbles on his father’s name. “To whoever finds this,” he goes on, his voice softening just a fraction as he moves away from the formalities. “I’m sorry. Because chances are you’re one of my closest friends. And I didn’t want it to end like this.” Licking his lips nervously, Eli looks downwards; in his lap are two sheets of Brody’s paper, both covered in pencil scribbles. His list of last requests. And his list of goodbyes. “But here I am,” he almost whispers, his gaze still on the list of requests, and after reading the first one several times over he squeezes his eyes shut tight. _I didn’t want it to end like this. Not here. Not this way._ Eli sees shining crimson curls, glassy, warm hazel-brown eyes, a single pearl tear on soft porcelain skin, and a sharp kick of guilt to his gut forces his eyes and his mouth to open.

 

“My first request,” he begins firmly, looking up at the kino, “is that the United States Air Force continue to pay for my mother’s medical care after I...after I die.” Saying it out loud, Eli is surprised to find that he feels nothing. “Please. My father died when I was sixteen and she can’t afford the bills on her own.” _Is it charity?_ he finds himself wondering as he glances down at the second request on his list. Is it charity that they would continue to help his mother? Or duty? Has he really done enough to be of that much importance? “My second request,” Eli proceeds just as firmly, “is that, upon return to Earth and restoration to a physical form, Ginn be allowed to live freely in the United States of America as a citizen, as if she were from Earth. No arrests, no persecution, no surveillance and no strings attached.”

 

On and on it goes, one thing after another, and when he’s done with the requests he moves on to the goodbyes. It took days of torment, and now death, for him to realise just how much he truly has in the universe. How many friends, how much family – blood and otherwise. His mother, who has always loved him unconditionally despite his many shortcomings as a son. The adoptive crew of the _Destiny_ , who have come to be his whole little world out here in unknown space. Brothers and sisters like Matt, Ron, Chloe, James, TJ, Riley. True best friends, something he’d never had before, something that Dale, Brody and Lisa now are to him. People he can count on. People he can trust. Even crew members like Varro, whom he doesn’t know so well, are important to him. Everyone becomes important when your entire world is made up of less than one hundred people on a single ship, didn’t he say that once? Everyone becomes important. And then there are those who are more than siblings, more than friends – those like Colonel Young and Rush and Camile, mentors, role models and parental figures. He has people that he can look up to and learn from, people he loves, people who believe in him even if his own father hadn’t.

 

But he’s let them down. He’s failed them. Their faith in his abilities was misplaced and now, when they wake in three long years, all they will find left of Eli Wallace will be a kino on the floor and his sealed-off quarters, a broken door-lock system that prevents them from seeing the evidence of his fate with their own eyes.

 

XxX

 

Three days. Just three days left, but already he’s given up. Now that _Destiny_ has locked him out of the interface there is nothing he can do. Nothing like this is ever mentioned in any of the accessible files as having happened before, and in his state the only conclusion he can draw is that _Destiny_ doesn’t want him to go into stasis. She must want Eli to die here, for her own reasons, though he’ll be damned if he can even imagine what they are. She’s smart though, this ship, far more so than _any_ of her passengers, so she has to have some good explanation that he, of course, won’t be privy to. Maybe he’s just of no importance to her anymore. Maybe she planned this from the beginning, knowing the crew well enough to predict that Eli would volunteer to take Young’s place. She could have sabotaged the last pod herself, caused the power surge that damaged the plate, messed with him a little in the darkness. Hell, with the way things have gone lately he wouldn’t put it past Rush to have orchestrated the whole thing: he would have known how to break the plate and that Eli would volunteer. He could easily have ensured that _Destiny_ would lock Eli out once he took the system offline and arranged a few mind tricks here and there. He could have done it so effortlessly, lying to Eli’s face at the very end. _You have real potential._ It all makes perfect sense _._

But it doesn’t matter, anyway. Whether or not his suspicions are correct – and he sincerely hopes that they’re not – he won’t be around to find out the truth.

 

He’s left his messages and his goodbyes: apologising to his mother. Thanking Colonel Young for being the closest thing to a _real_ father he’s ever had. Wishing Matt luck with his son when they all return to Earth, making sure Chloe will know how much he appreciated their friendship. He’d thanked the science team for being some of the best friends anyone could ask for, and asked that Dale be the one to carry on with the documentary. Leaning back into the small couch on the o-deck, eyes watching the swirling blues and purples and greens as they rush past, Eli is content with what he’ll leave behind. Guilt burns subdued in the deeper recesses of his heart for leaving Ginn this way, but he knows she’ll be safe on Earth. His mom will look after her and she’ll finally have a life free from danger, from persecution or hardship. She’ll be happy, and that’s all that matters. The only thing Eli wants to do now is sleep. _Three days. Just three days left_. Was this how Riley felt that day, waiting to die after the shuttle crash? _As quick and painless as going to sleep_. Smiling lightly to himself, he turns his head away from the lights, closing his eyes, ready for some much-needed rest. _Might as well get a head start._

 

“Hello, Eli.”

 

Eli jumps so violently that he nearly falls off the couch. Later, he’s a little embarrassed to admit he cried out in fright, and does his best to pretend that it wasn’t a scream. Pulse thundering wildly in his ears, suddenly very much awake and aware, he clings desperately to the arm at the opposite end of the couch, staring in absolute shock and terror at the open doorway. Standing just inside the room, appearing to almost flicker in the shadows of the FTL stream, is the tall figure of a man. Although still round in build, his dark hair still receding, much about him has changed; he looks healthier, not so drawn and not so pale. The previously stained white shirt he wears is now pristine and mended, and the usual expressions of either anxiety or aggravation have been replaced by a warm, good-natured smile that completely transforms his features. Eli can only stare. As he does so, the fear slowly begins to drain from his body at the sight of the familiar face: he knows this man. _Knew_ this man. Managing to catch his breath, white knuckles loosening around the fabric of the couch arm, Eli whispers, “ _Franklin_?”

 

Clearly, his smile growing, Dr Jeremy Franklin repeats, “Hello, Eli.”

 _It’s talking. The hallucination is talking._ Eli squeezes his eyes shut tight, counting to five, praying that when he opens them this mirage will have disappeared, vanished as quickly as it came. He doesn’t want to be crazy. He doesn’t want to have died with his mind so broken, not in that way – unable to tell what is real from what is not. But when he opens his eyes the man is still there. And Eli feels utter misery begin to grow deep down inside him, creeping up, up, up until it turns his heart cold and his fingers numb. “Oh my God,” he murmurs as he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and hiding his face in his hands. “Oh my _God_.” _I’ve lost it. Totally lost it._

“You’re not crazy, Eli,” the hallucination tells him, but he doesn’t believe it.

“Of course I’m not,” he mutters in reply. “I’m just talking to a figment of my imagination. Perfectly normal.” He groans loudly from beneath his fingers. “Isn’t it enough that you’re forcing me to die here?!” he demands of no one in particular, casting a frustrated look at the ceiling. “Isn’t it enough?!” His voice is rising, irritation beginning to override his desperation as he shouts, “Can’t you just let me die in peace?! This isn’t _The Sixth Sense_!”

“I’m not dead.” The close proximity of the voice makes Eli look down, and with a start he realises the Not Franklin is now sitting in the little chair beside him. His brow is furrowed, a distinct look of hurt on his face. Eli sighs deeply, wishing the hallucination wouldn’t move with such ghostly silence.

 

“Yes,” he corrects the vision slowly, as if explaining something to a small child. “You are. Rush said you were somehow uploaded into _Destiny_ ’s system.” He turns his attention back to the ceiling, getting ready to shout some more – because even if he doesn’t know who or what he’s shouting at, it feels so good to be something other than tired or afraid, hopeless or ashamed. But the hallucination isn’t done.

“And why on Earth should that mean I am dead?” it asks. Again Eli looks to his right, and this time the Not Franklin’s smile has returned. The man holds out his hand, palm up, and insists, “If I were dead, if I were a vision – would I feel like this?” Eli stares at the hand like he’s never seen one before, thoroughly confused. Not that he’s had much experience with these things, but shouldn’t his own imagination agree with him on most points instead of arguing back? He remembers everything Rush and Young described – shaking floors and deafening explosions, screaming and panic and Franklin in the neural interface chair, a shroud of blue mist and the man is just _gone_ , vanished like vapour into the air. He remembers before, coming back from the mess to find his friend fitting and seizing in the chair. Franklin had been catatonic ever since. He’d never been the same, right up until his death. “Go on,” the Not Franklin prompts him. Eli frowns and shakes his head, sighing a second time as he impatiently reaches up to prove the hallucination wrong.

 

He expects his hand to go straight through the one in front of him, like a knife through butter. But it doesn’t. His fingers close around solid flesh, skin and bone. Freezing, icy cold, but solid. Eyes wide, he squeezes around the palm in his grip, but it doesn’t give way. Eli’s mouth drops open. “You can’t be real,” he breathes, looking up to meet the man’s gaze. The ‘Not’ Franklin is grinning broadly, silent, and Eli feels a tendril of hope beginning to bloom in his chest. “You can’t _seriously_....” He grabs the icy fingers between both his hands, pressing down, over the palm, the wrist, up the arm, and then with a loud, “Oh, _shit!_ ” he throws his arms around Franklin and hugs him tightly; although they may never have been the best of friends exactly, seeing and feeling another human being after the past two weeks trapped alone in the darkness is almost too much for Eli to handle. He can feel laughter threatening to bubble up and burst out of him, but all of a sudden he’s fighting a lump of emotion building in his throat. It’s Franklin. It _is_ Franklin.

“Okay, okay, stay calm Math Boy!” Franklin tells him, but Eli can sense the smile in his voice as the man pats his back a little awkwardly. “Seriously, though,” he continues, and pulls back to fix Eli with a slight frown. “We don’t have much time.” _Time_. Eli can feel the grin immediately slide off his face. _Three days. Just three days left._

“No,” he agrees in a hushed voice, his heart dropping to somewhere near his navel. “We don’t.” He sucks in a deep breath, letting go and sitting back. The joy, the relief at having some human company is gone. Because this is all irrelevant. He doesn’t even understand how any of this is possible, but Franklin being here doesn’t matter – he won’t be around to appreciate it for much longer. “I’m going to die, Franklin,” he says, turning to look at his friend. “I can’t fix the pod, and _Destiny’_ s shut me out of the system. I’ve got three days left, thereabouts, and then life support shuts off, and then I die.” Eli sweeps his gaze around the rest of the observation deck, the beautiful lights, the Ancient furnishings, the ghosts of memories that have been created here. Soon he’ll be just as much of a ghost, just a piece of the past. Nothing but a memory. He chews on his bottom lip and blows out a sigh of air through his teeth. “Asphyxiation. What a way to go, huh?”

 

But when he turns back to Franklin, he finds the man smiling knowingly. “You aren’t going to die, Eli,” he says, and in the blink of an eye he is no longer seated. From his new position leaning back against the guard rail, Franklin continues, “You are going to live, but we have very little time left, so you must listen to what I tell you.” Another blink while Eli frowns in confusion and he is at the other end of the couch, wearing an expression of intense determination. This is the moment Eli realises that, although this Franklin may be real, he is most definitely not human.

“What _are_ you, Franklin?” he asks. “What happened to you?” A hint of a smile tugs at the corner of Franklin’s mouth for a few moments, silencing falling between them. It’s crucial that he does this right. The consequences will be devastating if he does not. Eli is watching him with exhausted, tormented eyes, and he knows well the mental state his young friend has been reduced to since the rest of the crew went to sleep. It was not at all pleasant to watch someone so important descend into hopelessness, self-doubt and despair. Just as he is not the same man he was before She came to him, Eli is not the same as he was when he volunteered – as planned – to stay behind. It is vital that Eli finds himself again, and so Franklin waits a minute for the boy to process everything before he speaks. When he does, he hopes to God he’ll say the right things.

“I Ascended,” he begins, “I Ascended, with help from _Destiny_. In the chair. That was what you saw.” Eli is staring at him again, but he presses on. “ _Destiny_ has stored my consciousness in Her system for now. Using that, She can create a physical manifestation of my body. I’m not dead, but...I wouldn’t call myself alive, either.”

 

 _Consciousness converts to energy, and no longer requires physical form._ One year ago, their first day trapped aboard the ship; Rush had talked of the Ancients and Ascension, like it was some kind of miracle. Eli knows more now, obviously – how the Ancients had learned to mentally Ascend to higher planes of existence, gaining abilities and deepening their understanding of the universe as corresponding to the plane they reached. It _did_ sound something like a miracle. But Franklin? _Franklin_ had managed to do that? “You really Ascended?” he asks, though he already knows the answer. Everything he heard makes sense now: the blue mist, the temperature drop, the way Franklin’s body had just disappeared. The older man nods, once. “Wow,” Eli murmurs, looking him up and down. “But....why? And how come I can touch you and stuff?” Now Franklin’s expression changes, and something close to shame seems to creep onto his face, his features visibly drooping. He clasps his hands in his lap and looks away, down at the floor, a crease appearing between his eyebrows.

“She called me,” he replies, and his voice is weaker. Almost upset. “She’d been calling me for a while, but I thought I was just imagining things. I wasn’t sleeping much – even in my dreams, I couldn’t escape Her.” He gives his shoes a rueful smile. Turning his gaze back to Eli, the boy finds a genuine remorse in Franklin’s eyes. “I am sorry,” Franklin continues, sincerity obvious in his words. “I am sorry for scaring you, the way I did. She _made_ me sit in that chair, Eli. She made me send you away. I had no choice.” Blink: Franklin is by the door. Folding his arms across his chest, he lets out a deep sigh. “But this is Her Plan. It is not my place to question Her.” He pauses, thinking of that day, the whispers in his mind. Yes, it was part of Her Plan. This is what he was always meant to do.

 

Eli studies Franklin carefully, the pieces beginning to fall together. He wonders how it must feel, to be neither dead nor living, to exist as pure consciousness for eternity. The idea alone makes him shiver. Then Franklin appears to rouse himself, brightening and ‘jumping’ a little closer. “You can touch me because I am not a hologram, nor a projection; I am a physical avatar. But I come and go as She pleases, appearing when _Destiny_ wishes to make contact with a member of the crew in order to, as She Herself put it, ‘actually help’.” He chuckles, and even Eli manages a noise of amusement – but his thoughts are still on what he has just heard.

“Wait,” he says, standing up to meet Franklin at eye level. “Hold up a minute.” Eli looks at him with something somewhere between incredulity and disbelief, frowning and trying to wrap his head around what he’s being told. “Are you saying you’ve appeared to people on this ship _before_?”

“Yes,” Franklin answers without hesitation. “To Rush. The day Riley died.” The mention of his lost best friend is like a punch to the stomach, but Eli does his best to keep his thoughts together. He opens his mouth to bombard Franklin with more questions, but before he can speak Franklin goes on. “His wife, Gloria, also appeared to him. She was a manifestation created from his memories, however; had he tried to touch her, he would have gone straight through. Memories do not allow _Destiny_ to create a solid, physical form.” It says much for his confusion that all Eli can ask after that is,

“ _Rush_ saw his _wife_?” Franklin simply ignores this.

“I don’t have _time_ to give you the details,” he insists, and Eli can detect an undercurrent of urgency in his voice. “ _Destiny_ sent me to ensure your survival, to speak on her behalf.” _Blink_ and he’s behind Eli, sitting in the same seat his friend has just vacated. “I was the one you felt watching you in the dark, kept seeing out of the corner of your eye. She asked me to watch you and monitor your progress. When you were shut out of the system, She quickly became concerned: She could see the darkness growing in your mind, feel your doubt and anguish – She apologises for Her transgressions into your thoughts, by the way, but it was necessary – ”

“ _Destiny_ was in _my head_?!”

 

Again, Eli’s incredulous outburst is ignored. “She knew that She must intervene, before you passed beyond all help,” Franklin explains calmly, “So She sent me here – ”

“But _why_? Why?! Franklin, I don’t understand – ”

“If you spend all your life questioning _why_ , you will never have time to appreciate _what_.” Franklin gives a frustrated shake of his head and sighs, meeting Eli’s gaze steadily. “ _Destiny’_ s mission has not yet been completed. To do so, She needs...She needs this crew. You are a vital part of that crew, Eli. You must help Her finish Her journey.” Eli opens his mouth to explain Rush’s discovery, that they know about the radiation, but Franklin holds up a hand before he can speak. “Rush was wrong about the cosmic microwave background radiation,” he continues. “Finding the intelligence that supposedly created the universe is not _Destiny_ ’s _real_ mission. An amusing idea, yes, and an irresistible lead, but not true.” As Eli sits and stares at him, Franklin reclines in his seat. He hopes he’s not going too fast for the boy, but they really don’t have much time left. And as _Destiny_ often reminds him, sometimes bluntness in the only way. Eli, meanwhile, opens and closes his mouth like a goldfish.

 _Rush? Wrong?_ “But – ”

“Planted data, Eli. A cover-up. A decoy. Information to be entered into _Destiny_ ’s system in the event of total emergency.” Lacing his fingers together, Franklin leans forward, holding Eli’s eyes. “The radiation storyline was intended to protect _Destiny_ ’s real mission plan by replacing the true data in a situation where either _Destiny_ or her captain believed that She would fall into enemy hands. Her mission _is_ , as the Ancients put it, ‘ _the destiny of all things’_...but not the discovery of ‘God’.” For a moment Eli licks his lips nervously, thinking, trying to process everything he’s being told.

 _Not Destiny’s real mission_. “So...so the _actual_ mission plan is...?” he asks slowly, reluctantly.

“Gone,” is Franklin’s answer. “Destroyed.” The younger man’s heart plummets instantly in his chest. They’d thought that completing the mission would enable them to return home, to go back to their families, and now...if what Franklin says is true...then that won’t be happening.

 

“So that’s it then,” he murmurs, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice. “If the mission plan is lost, if _Destiny_ removed it, then we can’t go home that way and – ”

“I said ‘destroyed’,” Franklin interrupts, “not ‘lost’. I also didn’t say that _Destiny_ was the one who erased it.” Another long pause, before Eli mutters – with an undeniable, lingering undertone of doubt –

“But _Destiny_ ’s crew never made it to the ship. We were the first ones here...” His words fade away as a rather large, knowing smile begins to form on Franklin’s face, and the scientist replies,

“Were you? Really?” And then suddenly he’s on his feet, making Eli take a quick step backwards in surprise, and he says, “It will take you longer to figure it out, but there are other ways to piece _Destiny_ ’s true mission together. Her last crew played their part perfectly, but it is now down to you. And it will change you all, before the end.” Eli has to bite his tongue to stop himself from blurting more ‘ _why?!_ ’s. He’s so tired, and so confused. His bones ache and his eyes burn, and in the grand scheme of things he is nothing, really. Completely insignificant.

 _I just want to sleep. That’s all I want. Just sleep._ “Franklin – ” He starts to speak, but is cut off abruptly.

“I can say no more,” Franklin tells him, sitting back down. “We don’t have the time. You must live.”

“But I can’t fix the pod,” Eli reminds the man, that deep, dark hole now ever-present inside him. “I don’t know how to bypass the lockout procedure. Unless,” and now he begins to feel a faint glimmer of hope, “ _Destiny_ can remove it and let me back in?”

 

His hope is quickly crushed when Franklin shakes his head, and smiles apologetically at him. “Nope,” he says, “ _Destiny_ has helped as much as She can without causing irreversible damage. I’m sorry.” This response is just too much for Eli to stand. He throws his hands up in the air, his temper flaring, and shouts,

“But she’s done _nothing_!” _This has to be some kind of joke, you can’t actually be serious?!_

“No, that’s not true,” Franklin replies, and the fact that his smile doesn’t even so much as falter only succeeds to piss Eli off even more.

“Then what?!” he snaps. He’s never been one to get angry with people, but this is just pushing it too far. “What the Hell has she done to help me?!” His yells are echoing loudly throughout dark, empty corridors, reverberating in the air. Feeling another round of despair and possibly a major panic attack coming on, Eli turns and walks away, rubbing his brow in frustration and fear. His hands are shaking as he reaches for the guard rail, where just eleven days ago he stood so calmly and confidently. Looking out at the shimmering lights of the FTL stream, he feels utterly hopeless. _Why couldn’t you just let me be? Why couldn’t you just let me have my last three days in peace?_ From somewhere behind him, Franklin’s voice answers,

“She has not sent you the solution. She has sent you the means to find one yourself.” Eli swallows hard. He’s had enough. _I’m done_ , he decides. _I’m done with this, now._

“That’s great, Franklin,” he says calmly, the anger seeping away and taking the last of his strength with it. Perhaps, if he humours him, the avatar will leave. So he takes a deep breath and turns, letting go of the rail to face his old friend. “That’s really – ” And then he stops. Because Franklin is not there. Apart from Eli, the observation deck is empty. “....Franklin?” He moves away from the rail and back towards the couch, looking around and peering closely into the darkest spaces. But nothing. He is totally alone. _For God’s sake, don’t tell me I imagined the whole thing_? Eli sighs, closing his eyes and lifting a still-trembling hand to his forehead. How did he get himself into this mess? _It wasn’t supposed to end like this_. How did he let it come to sitting in the shadows and waiting to slowly suffocate, planning where he’ll hide his body, deciding where he wants to be when it happens? _This is like a nightmare_.

 

Then he hears the footsteps. Faint and cautious, but growing quickly louder. He drops his hand and opens his eyes, steeling himself for another completely pointless conversation with Franklin, heated, hurt words boiling on the tip of his tongue – and then a voice. A timid, quiet voice that says his name, murmurs, “Eli?” into the darkness, and his fear evaporates and the air leaves his lungs in one short _whoosh!_ of shock as the bottom drops out of his stomach, his limbs turning instantly to jell-o, and Eli’s heart stops mid-beat in his chest.


	3. Part Three: Fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the third and final part of Echo - chapter one (Awakening) of the next instalment in the Ninth series, Stargate Universe: Light will be up in two weeks' time, on Monday 6th May. Light will be a multichapter, much longer than Echo and Glass, and is the first in a trilogy which will explore the next (and possibly final) adventure of the Destiny crew. The darkest, deepest secrets of the universe will be revealed, and all the loose ends will be tied in a mission that will both change lives and claim them. Follow my tumblr for more info, teasers, updates etc :) Hope you like this!

xxxx

**Stargate Universe: Echo**

Part Three: _Fate_.

xxxx

x

He hears the voice, feels the ripple of shock and disbelief that it shoots straight to the centre of his being, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t dare believe that it’s real, doesn’t turn to check, because it can’t be, _it can’t be_. His heart is hammering now, so wildly he can barely hear anything else, can feel it battering his ribcage like a jackhammer against concrete. “This isn’t funny,” he says aloud in a choked, rasping whisper. He knows _Destiny_ can hear him. He knows what she’s doing. “It really isn’t funny.”

“Eli?” The voice comes again, confused but a little louder, and Eli squeezes his eyes shut so tightly it hurts.

_Notrealnotrealnotreal_. Ice fills his stomach, numbing him from the inside out. His knees, his shoulders, his arms. He can’t feel his fingers.

“Eli, what’s going on?” More footsteps, and he presses unfeeling hands down hard over his ears, determined to block it out, desperate not to hear.

“Stop!” he pleads, the cry muffled and distant. “Please – I’ll do anything you want, just please, _stop_!” _I’ll miss you too_. This isn’t fair, this isn’t fair at all. _You’ll find a way, Eli, you will._ Why must _Destiny_ torment him in this way, why, why must she?! _I have to go now_. Then his hands are being pulled away from his ears and there is that voice, _her_ voice, saying his name over and over, and then something grabs the collar of his shirt and shakes insistently and his eyes fly open before he can stop himself. Deep, dark orbs bright with fear and alarm are the first thing he sees. Fiery curls. Glowing porcelain skin. His lungs are seizing up and he can’t breathe, can’t, can’t –

 

A sharp smack breaks the spell as a hand collides painfully with his face, and he is abruptly returned to his senses. “Eli!” Ginn shouts, shaking him as hard as she can, watching guiltily as an angry red mark begins to appear on his cheek; he’s staring at her in some kind of daze, like she’s just roused him from an awful nightmare. In a way, she supposes she has – she’s never seen him act like this before, never seen him so distressed, and it frightens her more than words can say. She doesn’t remember anything, doesn’t understand why the rest of the crew are nowhere to be seen or why she’s suddenly here again, why _Destiny_ is dark and lifeless and Eli is here alone and _in pieces_. Something cold and clammy and _bad_ is slithering around her navel and she knows, she _knows_ that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Ginn continues to shake him, but he seems to have calmed now. The slap must have restored some mental equilibrium. His vision clearing, Eli tries to recover himself from that moment of hysteria. He looks at her and the numbness begins to fade away with a faint tingling sensation, and as she raises a hand to gently touch his cheek he becomes aware of three things: that the left side of his face seriously stings. That her fingertips are soft. That they are warm.

 

He speaks then, roughly and slowly. It’s like trying to breathe with lungs full of sawdust, each word a weak, colossal effort. “Is it really you?” he asks, reluctant to touch her in case it makes her disappear. In case she leaves him again. Sighing with relief, Ginn releases her hold on his collar. He’s lucid.

“Yes,” she answers as she forces a smile, that uncomfortable fear still crawling about inside her. “Yes, I’m here. It’s me. It’s Ginn.” She slips her arms up and pulls him close, as close as she can; her fingers dig into the dark curls at the base of his neck, unsteady breaths filtering out over his shoulder. As confused and frightened as she is by this echoing, empty ship she has woken up to, what scares her most is the condition she has found him in. A few seconds of silence pass between them, and concern wrenches her stomach and she tries desperately not to panic. But then Eli moves, his arms wrapping around her waist and welding her to him so fiercely that she’s almost lifted off her feet. She has to stretch up on her tiptoes as it is. Eli all of a sudden feels very shaky, like the aftermath of a severe adrenaline rush. Realisation is starting to set in, the veil of disbelief fading away as he takes in the shuddery breathing in his ear, the solid reality of her body against his own. _She’s real_.

“ _Ginn_ ,” he murmurs feebly, reverently, as if uttering something sacred and secret. “ _Ginn_.” He can feel her heartbeat against his chest, strong and fast and undeniable even through his shirt and her uniform. Shining hair tickles his cheek. She smiles genuinely against his neck, the iciness that fills her thawing a little as he says her name. He _remembers_ her. All she can do is nod in response while she tries to swallow down the lump building in her throat.

 

Eli’s eyes are beginning to water, and he fights to get a grip on himself. This shouldn’t be possible. Ginn shouldn’t be here. She should be pure consciousness, quarantined safely in _Destiny_ ’s system waiting for him to – _Destiny has stored my consciousness in Her system for now. Using that, She can create a physical manifestation of my body._ Eli stills, his breath catching, his gaze fixed on the couch where the avatar of his Ascended friend was sitting not ten minutes ago. _She has not sent you the solution. She has sent you the means to find one yourself._ Understanding dawns on him, and now laughter is beginning to creep up from somewhere deep down inside him, shaking his shoulders and contorting his wasted features into a grin. Thinking it to be sobs Ginn pulls back as his hold on her loosens, studying his face with worry; that’s when the laughter escapes, loud and almost hysterical, exploding out of him and shattering the eerie quiet of the o-deck. “He meant you!” he gasps out, the strength of his fit making her own body tremble. A faint crease appearing between her eyebrows, Ginn looks at him with wide eyes as she asks again,

“Eli, what’s going on?” She, of course, receives no answer as he continues to laugh to himself.

“She sent me _you_ to help fix the pod!” he continues, tears sliding down his face, over the painful-looking red handprint on his left cheek. Ginn shakes her head at him, gripping his shirt between her fingers: the dark bloodstains across the material aren’t helping to quell the rapidly-growing fear in her aching heart. She’s seriously considering slapping him again as she half shouts,

“What pod?! I don’t – ” before dry lips suddenly crash against her own.

 

XxX

 

_29 Hours...._

 

Half a lifetime of relying on her instincts to survive means that Ginn is right; something horrible _has_ happened on board this ship. Seeming to have finally calmed himself, Eli explains the events that have taken place since she was quarantined, walking slowly through abandoned corridors to the stasis hall. Her stomach twists when he reaches the part where he volunteered to stay behind, and as he describes his steady descent into fear and despair she raises a trembling hand to her still-tingling lips. The ferocity of his kiss still sparks through her like electric shocks – the idea that he has spent the last two weeks alone in this darkness, scared and hopeless and waiting to die, that she wouldn’t have known if he’d.....A large hand squeezes gently around hers. Turning to him, Ginn finds Eli watching her with a look of concern clearly visible even in the dim light of the lamp he carries. For his sake, she tries to smile, if only to absolve him of worry. After everything he’s been through he doesn’t need to be burdened with anything more. The look in his eyes when he first opened them still haunts her: so lost, so devastatingly defeated. Such emotions don’t belong in his heart. He’s Eli Wallace, the Boy Genius, and she has complete faith that there isn’t a problem in this universe he can’t fix; he should never doubt his abilities. He should never resign himself to failure. But here he is, a shadow of the man Ginn really knows him to be. His features are pale and gaunt, his ruined clothes hanging loosely on him; he obviously hasn’t eaten or slept properly in days, hasn’t been able to shower. There are dark circles under his eyes and a worrisome amount of blood on his shirt – it doesn’t have to be a lot, any at all is too much. As they walk she studies him carefully and subtly, his words reverberating in the air. _I couldn’t do anything._ The past eleven days have not been kind to him and she hates that his courage was rewarded with cruel misfortune.

 

But that’s going to change now. She is here and she’s going to help him fix the pod so that he can go into stasis. According to Eli, _Destiny_ has manifested a physical copy of her body using her consciousness; judging from the warmth of her skin and the beating of her heart, he believes that unlike ‘Franklin’ – whoever that is – Ginn is a permanent manifestation, free from _Destiny_ ’s control. She takes that to mean she won’t unexpectedly disappear and, knowing _Destiny_ can almost certainly hear her silent plea, hopes with everything she has that Eli is right. It means she’s going to asphyxiate in just under twenty-nine hours, her presence halving the remaining three days, but Ginn doesn’t care. Not as long as Eli is safely asleep first.

 

When they finally reach the stasis hall, the reality of the situation hits her fully; having last been awake on board when everything was, with the exception of the Rush and Amanda issue, relatively fine on the ship, she can only look around in a combination of shock and dismay at her surroundings. Two rows of silent, sleeping faces line the walls of the room, perfectly still in their individual pods. Faces she knows. Faces she has come to care for. Eli moves over to set the lamp down on top of the main stasis interface, but Ginn trails behind. Slowly she runs her fingertips carefully over the smooth glass of each pod door, peering in at the occupants, as if tracing their serenity. “They all look so peaceful,” she breathes out as she looks in on Rush, the usually scowling scientist’s expression soft and relaxed in the faint illumination of his frozen state. He can barely see her in the near-darkness, but Eli can sense the emotion behind her words: it hurts her to see the rest of the crew like this.

“Yeah,” he agrees softly, continuing to watch her as she draws level with the final, empty pod and pauses for a few seconds or so. “Yeah. They do.” He hopes that the size of the pod doesn’t bother her. It looks smaller from the outside than it actually is and he doesn’t think she’s claustrophobic, but he knows that for some people – such as Greer and Dale – the prospect of any small, enclosed space is seriously daunting. She won’t say anything though, even if it does bother her. She’ll be okay.

 

Ginn tears her eyes away from Eli’s pod, resisting the urge to step inside and explore, figure out the mechanics for herself. Like him she loves to know how things work, and developing a fascination with all things Ancient had been her only form of coping mechanism after her abduction. But there’s no time to appease her curiosity now. They’ve got work to do. So instead Ginn turns to Eli where he is looking at her from behind the interface, and moves to stand by his side. “You said it just suddenly went black, right?” she double-checks, frowning at the dark screen before them. Forcing himself to focus on the screen he nods in answer, fighting to collect his thoughts and let go of the desire to kiss her, touch her, hold her. Clearing his throat lightly, he clarifies,

“Right after I pressed the button for the millionth time. I expected the alarm to go off again but all I got was a sort of quiet bleep, and then text came up saying something like ‘authority unknown, access denied’. Then it said it was going to ‘initiate lockout procedure’ and went black.” She’s nodding along as he speaks, more to show that she understands rather than because she knows what’s wrong. Sighing, Eli gazes forlornly at the interface. “I just don’t get it,” he mutters. “Nothing like this has ever come up before.”

“Me either,” she tells him honestly, also sighing. Her frown fades as she reaches out and presses randomly on the keys of the interface, thinking. No reaction. In her time with the Lucian Alliance she studied numerous Ancient programs and systems, and not one had ever locked the user out in the way Eli has described. Still, she’s not prepared to give up. Ginn looks up at him and smiles, a little more genuinely this time. “But I think I know where to start,” she adds optimistically, and it’s not really a lie; she has a good idea of what _isn’t_ the problem. Eli grins at her attempt to be positive, knowing that her determined nature won’t let her quit just yet. Knowing that their time is quickly running out.

 

_Destiny_ made the right call, that’s obvious. If anyone is going to be able to help him repair this error, it’ll be Ginn. She’ll figure it out and together they can salvage something from this mess he has created. Something. Anything. Just enough to allow her to join their friends in stasis and be _safe_. Be alive. In that respect, _Destiny_ ’s plan will fail: Eli has no intention of surviving this. Instead, in three years’ time Ginn will take his place among the crew and help finish _Destiny_ ’s mission. It’s a second chance that she deserves. She had her life snatched violently away by Simeon, but he can fix that in exchange for his own. He can, and will, die willingly for her. This is his choice.

 

Ginn’s eyes glitter in the faint light, full of that warmth he so treasures, and without another word she steps lightly into his arms. Her ear presses against his chest, grabbing onto him almost as desperately as she did an hour ago. Eli immediately returns her embrace and holds her tightly, enveloping her in gentle heat and softness. Sighing out an unsteady breath against her hair, he closes his eyes, trying to memorise her scent: familiar and reassuring, like sunshine and summer and home. “You have no idea...” he begins quietly, but the rest of the words get stuck in his throat. He means to tell her just how unbelievable it feels to have her back, how grateful he is. That he would’ve fought to restore her himself, no matter how long it took, if _Destiny_ hadn’t seen fit to do so of her own volition. That even though he’s still going to die, having her with him just for these final twenty-nine hours makes the last two weeks of torture worth it. So worth it. But he can’t. He can’t adequately put any of that into words.

 

She understands though. She feels it in his touch, hears it in his voce, has seen it in his eyes for the past hour. She understands. “I know,” Ginn breathes back, measuring each comforting beat of his heart, savouring his warmth. So that she’ll have something to hold onto later, as it ends. Swallowing hard, Eli forces out,

“I meant what I said, before.” His heart skips a beat beneath her ear. “I do. I do love you.” Ginn feels her own voice die now, retreating down inside her to the place where she hides away her more painful memories, the ones she tries to forget, the place where she hides her deepest fears. With a considerable amount of effort and a nervous lick of her lips, she nods fervently against his chest, and tells him again,

“I know.” It’s the second time he’s said he loves her. The second time she hasn’t been able to say it back. Not because she doesn’t feel it – oh, she does, always has, from the first moment she saw him. He’d been eating with Brody, Dale and Lisa in the Mess when she and some of the other Lucians had taken a table on the other side of the room, a respectful distance away from their Tau’ri captors. A little uneasy to begin with, she edged closer to Varro, knowing he wouldn’t let her come to any harm, and that’s when she saw him: the fabled Eli Wallace, sitting and laughing about something called ‘Star Trek’ with the other scientists. She liked his laugh. And his smile. He’d glanced over a few times, but every time she had looked quickly away, blushing. That one look was all it had taken; after that the thought of him hadn’t left her alone. Yes, she loves him. But if she says it now, speaks it aloud, there’s no way she’ll be able to let him go when the time comes. She’s not that strong.

 

Hoping Eli can still at least sense how she feels, Gin changes the subject. “We’re gonna do this,” she says. “We’re going to fix it.” He smiles at her use of the word ‘we’, and wonders just how badly she’ll blow up at him when he tells her that she’s the one who’ll be using the pod.

“Yeah, we are,” he agrees, pulling back so he can look at her. She returns his smile, perhaps a little weakly, but it’s there. Loosening his grip on her waist, he goes on, “So. Where do we start?” But Ginn shakes her head, and replies,

“No, not you.” Frowning, he starts to protest; she stops him with a finger to his lips. “You need to go lie down before you fall down,” she tells him firmly, “I have to think, and I can’t do that if I’m worrying about you.” Her eyes flicker softly over his face, hazel-brown depths taking in all the damage the past eleven days have done to him. “You already saved me once before,” she murmurs, forcing more reassurance into her smile. With gentle fingers, she pushes back a stray curl from his forehead. “I’m going to save you now.”

 

XxX

 

For the first time in almost two weeks, Eli sleeps solidly, unafraid. He doesn’t dream.

 

XxX

 

With Eli safely sleeping off his exhaustion in his quarters, Ginn gets to work on eliminating the few possibilities of what could have triggered the lockout procedure. Not a power issue; Eli was too careful for that. Having insisted that he take the lamp with him so he could find his way, Ginn has been left in the closest thing to total darkness – but that’s not why her fingers keep slipping on the keys. Though she’s done her absolute best to hide it from Eli, re-adjusting to a physical form is proving a little difficult. She can remember nothing of quarantine, so the last time she was aware of anything she’d been a mere hologram. Finding that she can all of a sudden _touch_ things, feel her own heart beating in her chest....it takes some getting used to. The first thing she did after Eli reluctantly left the room was press two trembling fingers against her wrist, measuring her pulse: _one, two, three, four......_

 

While she works Ginn savours every single breath of air that enters and leaves her lungs, every brush of her hair against her face, each sweep of cool metal under her fingertips. All the things that she always took for granted. _What a strange thing, to be alive_ , she thinks in the dark. _What a wonderful thing_. Tapping quickly on a few of the buttons, she tries an old restart sequence from an Ancient system she studied about a year ago. When the system crashed halfway through diagnostics the sequence managed to bring it back online. Nothing; the screen remains black. She has to hold in a sigh of disappointment, and finds herself thankful for the fact that she is a patient person. Another trait she’d had to develop to survive a Lucian-governed Patria. Learnt from her brother, passed on to her sister. Brow creasing, Ginn carries on determinedly pushing buttons. God, she misses them. It’s an ache beyond the description of words, a constant longing, a hole in her heart that she’ll never be able to fill or repair. It’s a pain she suppresses for the majority of the time – only in moments alone, such as this, does she allow her mind to drift to the source. The past two years have gone surprisingly fast. That night doesn’t feel nearly so long ago, every single detail still perfectly preserved in her memory after all this time.

 

Midnight. Chills and hunger. Insomnia bred from constant fear. Atia was asleep with her head in Ginn’s lap; dreaming of sweet things, her older sister had hoped, her young face soft and innocent and barely different from when they were children. But even as she gazed at her sister and gently braided the girl’s shining blonde hair, Ginn had been unable to relax. The empty hearth hadn’t crackled with fire in days, and an eerie quiet had descended over the village. In the next room their parents spoke in low, cautious whispers. Always fearful of who might be listening. Who might be watching. And then Darrus, hammering at the door and bursting into the house with his uniform all askew, urging their mother to gather Ginn’s things because they were coming, they were coming for her and three others in the village and they were coming tonight, coming _now_. Words every Patrian lived in terror of hearing. Scrambling into a coat and hood, her only pair of shoddy boots, pushing down the fear in her heart because fear will do her no good, fear will get her killed. Fear will get her taken. Atia, barely seventeen years old, buttoning her own jacket with trembling fingers because if she is here and Ginn is not they will take _her_ as payment, as punishment – and then out into the fields, into darkness so total that your eyes couldn’t guide you. In the end, her brother’s warning hadn’t mattered. They still caught her, chased them into the forest, drawing them apart with flares and EL pulses. One direct hit to the back and she was paralysed, unable to call out to her sister, unable to run.

 

Ginn closes her eyes, drawing in a deep breath as she leans against the interface. _No tears_ , she reminds herself. _They wouldn’t have wanted tears_.

 

The worst part, she often thinks, is not knowing. Not knowing if Atia was pursued, taken also. Not knowing if their mother and father were harmed by the Lucians who came calling. Not knowing if Darrus escaped with his life. Her brother was an honourable man, courageous and kind; he was only eighteen when he was conscripted into the ‘reformed’ Patrian forces in the first year of Lucian rule. Ginn herself was just ten at the time, and Atia seven. He was taller than their father, built strong, dark-haired and ruggedly handsome. If the Lucians found out that he warned his family, they would have gone beyond punishment. Darrus would have been executed. But Ginn doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if _any_ of her family are still alive, and that’s the part that haunts her.

 

Life on Patria had been difficult enough, working hard and scraping by, content but always poor. Then the Lucians came and existence descended into something out of nightmares. Really, the idea that her clan – an old-fashioned Patrian word for ‘village’ or ‘community’, slightly different to the Tau’ri meaning – was at all involved in the attack on Earth, let alone _responsible_ for it, is completely ridiculous. All weapons were confiscated from the Patrian civilians, and in the villages the knowledge needed to formulate such a plan just wasn’t possessed. It wasn’t taught and it wasn’t sold. There were some people in her clan who couldn’t even speak _English_ , and that was a compulsory second language for all Patrians. There were people who could barely read and write, who struggled just to live from one day to the next. _Everyone_ had heard of Earth: a green paradise where rivers ran un-poisoned and there was always plenty. A distant haven where everything was safe and nothing hurt. Even though her time with the Lucian Alliance taught her that there is little good in this universe, Ginn can’t shake the idea of what Earth is said to be, and she knows her people would feel the same. No, they would never even consider bringing harm to the planet they so desperately dream of. Laying the blame on her village had to have been part of some Lucian punishment. Feeding the information to Earth, turning the very planet her people idolised against them. It was so clearly payment for a sizeable transgression, most likely one of the revolutionary kind: once word of Earth’s disdain for them reached Patrian ears, morale would crumble in the blink of an eye. No morale, no rebellion, no threat. Supreme control.

 

She had been halfway through successfully convincing Homeworld Command of this when she’d died. Effectively.

 

They’d refused to help, of course. They were unwilling to further involve themselves in trouble with the Lucians, and so her people would just have to continue to starve and suffer in their slavery. O’Neill didn’t put it in those words exactly. To his credit his apology seemed genuine enough, but he had orders from higher up; and without Earth’s help, there’s only one future her home planet faces. It’s enough to bring any ex-slave to tears, but what Ginn feels is closer to frustration. With Earth, the supposed promised land, for refusing to save them. With herself, for failing to secure the liberation of her people. Her one chance, and she blew it. Letting out a sharp breath, Ginn pauses in the middle of trying yet another sequence and runs her fingers a little harder than necessary across a jumble of other keys, squeezing her eyes shut and stepping away from the interface. “Stop it,” she tells herself firmly, rubbing her forehead and starting to see stars beneath her eyelids. “Stop it, Ginn, get it together.” The past is the past. Not even two days from now she will be dead, anyway, and her part in this will be over. Her job is to make sure Eli goes into stasis and for that she needs to get a grip, suck it up. If she can’t save her planet or her people and certainly not herself, then she has to at least save the life of the man she loves. Eli is important. She is not.

 

After a few more moments to collect her wits, Ginn moves back to the interface with renewed determination, and draws on all of her Lucian-gained knowledge and experience. Every interface that has ever crashed, every program that has ever failed. Every time she has ever had to bring an unresponsive system back from the dead. And then, as if by magic – though more likely sheer force of will – an idea occurs to her. A flutter of a thought, a flash of doubtful possibility. She grabs Eli’s stack of notes from on top of the panel and starts to shuffle through.

 

XxX

 

_25 Hours...._

 

When Eli wakes it’s to a soft voice calling his name and fingers in his hair, and for a moment he thinks he’s imagining the smiling redhead kneeling beside his bunk. Then the events of a few hours ago come flooding back. “Ginn,” he breathes, sitting up hurriedly. “What’s wrong, what’s – ”

“ _Calm_ ,” she says, putting a hand on his chest to stop him from jumping out of bed. Everything’s okay. I just thought I should wake you up because I’ve got some good news.” Reassured, Eli relaxes. He leans back against the end of his bunk and lets out a little sigh of relief, her infectiously bright grin making the corner of his own mouth start to turn up. But before he can ask her what the good news is, Ginn stands and turns to his workstation where the lamp that he’d switched off now flickers faintly. She quickly returns to his side with a cup of water and a canteen. “I was working on the lockout problem,” she begins quietly as she passes him the cup; suddenly parched, Eli gulps the contents down in seconds. “I was thinking about my time with the Lucians. And I had an idea.” Her smile seems to grow into a warm beam that sets him at complete ease. “I got past the lockout.” Eli chokes on his water. Coughing and spluttering, he stares at her in an amusing combination of disbelief and surprise, and Ginn can’t help but laugh to herself.

“You did it?!” he exclaims, hardly daring to believe it. But she nods proudly at him, and his face lights up with joy. “That’s incredible! How?!”

 

“I rebooted it with a minor energy surge,” she explains. “The system locked you out because it thought you were an intruder. The same thing happened to me just before we came to _Destiny_. But first, you need to eat something.” Taking the empty cup from him, she places the canteen gently on his lap, holding out a spoon. “I’m sorry it’s cold....couldn’t warm it up.” Even though he can feel his stomach silently rumbling Eli is eager to get back to the stasis hall and finish working, to find out her solution. Food can wait until after she is safely asleep in the last pod. Away from harm and alive.

“Thanks, sweetie, but I’m really not hungry,” he tells her, trying to pass the canteen back. Ginn doesn’t argue; she only raises her eyebrows as if daring him to try and refuse. “Really,” he insists, “I’ll eat later, I promise.” Again, no reply. Just that same, _you really wanna try this?_ expression, and it only takes a long second or two before he caves. “Okay,” Eli sighs, taking the spoon from her as a triumphant grin begins to form on her face. The white paste they call ‘food’ _is_ cold, and dry and tasteless – but the second the first spoonful passes his lips he’s in heaven, starved as he is. He’s wolfing it down before he can help himself, finally filling the aching emptiness of his stomach.

“There’s more, if you want it,” Ginn tells him, running the soft material of the sheets between her fingers as he eats. “Don’t eat it too fast though, or you’ll make yourself sick.” Scooping sludge into his mouth, Eli swallows and with a confused smile he murmurs,

“Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?” There’s too much surety behind her words, too much experience in the way that, he now realises, she has broken up his food into small portions. She will likely make him wait a little while before she allows him to have more. Ginn’s grin has faded into a faint smile, and now there is an undeniable sadness lingering, well-hidden, in her features. He can see it in her eyes. Feel it in the way the atmosphere changes around them. Her fingers dropping from the blankets, she tugs down needlessly on her sleeve and looks up, meeting his gaze steadily.

“The Lucians weren’t very generous,” she explains quietly. “They fed us according to their whims. Many people starved.” Eli pauses, his spoon clinking noisily into his now-empty canteen. This isn’t the first time she’s talked about the suffering her people endured, and continue to endure, under Lucian rule. But every time she does it chills him, burns him right to the core – with anger, with pain. He can’t fathom the cruelty required to cause so much devastation, can’t even begin to imagine how _anyone_ could survive the things that she has described to him. Burning villages, famine, abductions; public executions of ‘rebels’ in front of their own families. Eli can barely comprehend the horror of what her adolescent life on Patria must have been like; he can only sit here and look at her with sympathy and hurt in his deep brown eyes, a hurt he feels for her and her people. Reaching out a hand to her, Ginn slips her fingers into his and tries to smile more brightly at the comforting squeeze he gives them. Taking a deep breath, she squeezes back.

 

“But it’s all going to be okay now,” she continues, warming a little inside as she pictures him finally making it back to Earth, home to his mother and his old life. When that day comes, he won’t have to know fear anymore. He can return to his homeworld, the fabled planet of liberty and abundance that her own people so desperately hope for. No more pain. No more despair. He will be safe, able to live and love without danger or grief. As he should be. Eli forces a weak smile to turn up the corner of his mouth as he repeats,

“It’s all going to be okay,” and finds solace in the fact that, on Earth, Ginn will never know that kind of suffering again. She will be free. Inwardly collecting herself, Ginn takes the empty canteen from him and gets to her feet, tugging on his hand.

“Come on,” she says. “I’ll explain on the way.”

 

XxX

 

_She moves quickly down the corridor, her footsteps echoing loudly, and she curses in Patrian under her breath: if she draws attention to herself, there’ll be serious trouble. Casting a nervous glance over her shoulder to make sure she isn’t being followed, Ginn turns right down another passage. Each step brings her closer to the ship’s central system. For the past few weeks this area of the ship has been under restricted access, courtesy of Commander Kiva. Lieutenants only. Severe punishment for anyone else caught here without her prior permission. Speeding up, Ginn tells herself to calm down and stop being so nervous. Kiva is away attending to some kind of imposter situation on Earth, along with most of her Lieutenants – someone from_ Destiny _, Varro had whispered, pushing his small sidearm into her trembling hands. Someone from_ Destiny _is posing as Colonel Telford. The cold weight of the gun in her hand smothers any excitement she should be feeling about contact with the Tau’ri crew; weapons have also been restricted to just Kiva and her senior officers, and if she’s caught now then she’ll have no choice but to kill the witness, starting the mutiny earlier than planned._ One more left turn _, she reminds herself._ Then first door on the right. _Whoever it is that’s been trying to pass for Telford, she sincerely hopes they know what they’re doing. If the Lucians catch them.....well, they’ll live. Kiva will want them to dial the Stargate to_ Destiny _. But there will be torture and pain for them, first. Slipping a hand into the pocket of her shirt, Ginn takes out a circular piece of glass about half the size of her palm. Bright digits on the surface of the timepiece tell her she doesn’t have long to do this. She takes the left-hand turn and lays eyes on her target, a large metal door set into the wall not twenty feet away. She hurries on without hesitation._

_It’s no secret what Kiva plans to do once they successfully dial the gate. The innocent crew will be slaughtered, the Lucians will take command and the systems of the ship will be plundered, scoured for any information that points to there being truth behind the Ancient legend. The idea that_ Destiny _might hold the answers to controlling space and time is incredible, the possibilities fascinating – especially for an Ancient enthusiast like Ginn. Perhaps a little too good to be true, but incredible. Which is why they can’t allow Kiva to remain in command of this mission._ Destiny’s _secrets need to be studied carefully, patiently. And her crew should not have to die for the Lucian greed of Kiva and her henchmen. Reaching the door, Ginn shifts the gun into her other hand and looks around, checking that the corridor is completely empty. Satisfied, she taps a quick, five-digit sequence into the glowing electronic keypad on the wall. The new entry code, provided by Varro. Immediately there’s a quiet_ beep! _and the doors slide open, revealing the central interface room. The technological core of the ship. Kiva commands from the bridge, but everything – every action, every search, every piece of data – originates from here. Lower-ranking crewmembers have been locked out of the mainframe as part of Kiva’s new restrictions, but it’s Ginn’s job to get inside, carry out her task and get out without anyone noticing. And before Kiva and her Lieutenants return. She wishes Varro was here with her instead of on Earth: the mutiny wasn’t supposed to happen so soon, but they might not get another chance like this for weeks, so she has to do it now. Still, she and Varro have been a team ever since she was forced to join the Lucian Alliance and serve on this ship. For the past two years he’s looked out for her, protected her from the more dangerous members of the crew – Dannic, Simeon. He’s been the older brother in her life since she was separated from her family, and attempting to do something so risky without his help is more than a little nerve-wracking. Especially given the consequences if she fails._

_Stepping into the small room, the blood is thrumming in her ears, her breathing shallow. Deep in the darkest recesses of her heart she fights to suppress the kind of fear she hasn’t felt since the night raid that took her away from her homeworld and her family forever. Not of death, no – she’s seen and faced too much death for the prospect to frighten her anymore. It’s fear for her friends that she feels, for those she loves. Kiva clearly suspects something; if Ginn is caught trying to access the system using Varro’s code, the breach will be traced back to him, and from there on to the other soon-to-be mutineers. Maybe the information will have to be tortured out of them, but the Lucians will find out about the mutiny plans sooner or later. And then the things that’ll happen to Varro, Koz and the rest of her friends will be unspeakable. Not to mention what will happen to herself, if she’s not lucky enough to be shot on sight. Silently she crosses the floor and lays her unsteady hands on the familiar keys of the mainframe interface. As is the style on many Ancient and Lucian vessels, the interface stands from ceiling to floor in the centre of the room. Numerous panels cover the surface, dials and keys and switches that navigate the vast depths of the ship’s computer. In order to take control of this mission, they need to gain control of the ship. And the key to that is Kiva. Or rather, Kiva’s information. Once in the system Ginn has to transfer the Commander’s personnel code, briefs from higher command, orders, data, everything. Plus the ship’s information, crew, supplies, weaponry – all of it, straight to Koz where he waits at his workstation on the other side of the ship. She also has to reset some of the vessel’s security codes to new sequences, giving her fellow mutineers access to the armoury, life support system, the core interface and to manual control of the ship. As soon as she completes the transfer, it will begin. The others will arm themselves and, despite being outnumbered, with weapons they should be able to disable and secure those loyal to Kiva within the hour. When she returns, it’ll be the mutineers who outman and outgun her Lieutenants; especially when the only rebel among their rank, Varro, turns his weapon on them too. After that the next step is to take command of the planet where they have been recreating the Icarus Project, and work towards dialling the gate for peaceful interactions with the crew of the_ Destiny _. The appearance of this Tau’ri imposter is a huge advantage._

_It was never going to be a pleasant ordeal, but for the sake of_ Destiny’s _secrets – and the crew she carries – they must act. There’s no time for hesitation. Sucking in a deep breath to calm herself, Ginn runs her fingers over the panel and flips a switch, before casting her mind back to the last talk she had with Varro about the plan. Then she begins to type, slowly and carefully so as not to make any mistakes: digit after digit she enters Varro’s personnel code. All of the Lieutenants, plus Kiva, have an individual sequence of numbers assigned specifically to them, which serves to give them access to things that lower-ranking crewmembers are prohibited from using or seeing themselves. In this case, the restriction Kiva has placed on the mainframe interface means that the entry of either her own code, or one of her Lieutenants’, is required before it can be accessed. Using Varro’s code puts him at extreme risk if the plan fails; known only to the owner, it points straight to his involvement in the plot. But once the transfer is complete they will have Kiva’s code, with the ability to override all others, and incriminating Varro won’t matter. Tapping in the final digit, Ginn flips another switch and finds the ‘execute’ button. Her fingertips hover over it for just a second before pressing quickly down._

_But nothing happens. She isn’t redirected to the main screen of the interface, like she should be. Instead the system makes a funny little noise and, wiping the digit spaces clear, presents her with a blank code entry screen. Her heart flutters in her mouth._ That’s not supposed to happen. Not at all. _Inside Ginn’s stomach twists with fear, but she tries valiantly to shake it off and admonishes her nervousness. Despite her caution she must have entered the sequence wrong, she decides. Her state is throwing her off and making her forget the correct code. So she re-types the numbers, even more carefully this time, and when she’s confident that she has it correct she presses the ‘execute’ button a second time. Again, nothing, and now her nerves are beginning to fray. She tries a third time, and a fourth – each try only results in a little noise and failure. An icy chill is starting to work its way up her spine as it occurs to her just what this problem might mean, but she can’t just give up, can’t let Varro down. She ignores the chill and instead enters the code a fifth time, in the hope that she has still somehow been typing it wrong. Dread bubbles unpleasantly in her chest – and then abruptly turns to horror as, with a push of the button, a loud, resounding_ BEEEEEEE! _blurts out of the interface. She jumps nearly out of her skin. Blaring text appears on the screen flashing,_ UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. COMMENCE LOCKOUT _, and as she scrambles to press every key within reach in a vain attempt to stop the noise, the interface screen goes completely dark. The_ BEEEEEEE! _cuts off, her ears ringing from the sudden onslaught of noise. The Ginn that’s left in suffocating silence is now white as a sheet and shaking violently. There’s no way one of the Lucians didn’t hear that. No way. They’ll be coming for her, any minute now. It could be a matter of seconds._

_Fumbling in her haste and fright, she summons what is left of her wits and knows that she has to transfer what she can before it’s too late, before she either kills one of her superior officers or is killed herself. Desperation and panic fuel her, and without so much as a pause for thought she shoves a hand into her pocket, retrieving the glass timepiece. It breaks easily against the hard metal of the interface. The little disc of power crystal inside joins the sharp shards in the palm of her hand, but not for long. Brushing off the glass, Ginn searches the panel before her for the connection socket, and as soon as she finds it she forces the disc in; it’s the wrong shape and it’s too big, but as it shatters inside the socket the energy it contains surges up into the interface. In seconds the system begins to light up again with a slight hum, rebooted, the lockout procedure bypassed, and she finds herself staring at the main screen of the interface._ Bingo _. But as she begins to transfer the most vital of the information, waiting for the sound of approaching footsteps, a nauseous terror grips Ginn and makes her tremble. Varro’s personnel code has been de-authorized, which can mean only one thing: Kiva doesn’t suspect. She knows._

XxX

 

“An energy surge?” Eli’s tone is thick with disbelief, barely daring to hope that the solution to the problem could be so simple. Rested and fed, returned to a state of sanity, he knows there’s no chance that his mind is playing tricks on him this time. The brightly lit stasis interface in front of him is real. Cautiously he lifts his fingertips to the screen, brushing over the surface, sweeping lightly across buttons and keys. Beside him the corner of Ginn’s mouth curves up in a grin, and she presses close to join him in ghosting over the revived panel.

“Yes,” she answers. “A minor shock to the system, a reboot. Because all of the data for the stasis programs is stored in _Destiny’s_ mainframe computer and sent to this interface from there, it’s all safe. So a reboot of the panel – to which the lockout is specifically linked – didn’t affect it.” Looking up, there is just enough light for her to make out the closest crewmembers. Sure enough, Colonel Young and Rush are still sleeping soundly, oblivious to the inevitably fatal situation facing two of the ship’s youngest passengers. “The only downside is it didn’t get us past the personnel code part.” She won’t tell Eli that she has had the problem solved for over an hour, that finding and searching the repairs bay for a small power source didn’t take her long at all. He doesn’t need to know that she took the kino from his quarters and, at a relatively safe distance on the o-deck, where the echoes of his own voice wouldn’t wake him, watched him slowly crumble into pieces as his attempt to save his life began to fail. Some parts of it made Ginn smile, made her laugh at the optimism and good humour with which he started – but in the end, it had been too much: fast-forwarding the moment the words _last will and testament_ left his lips. The soft, recorded words of his goodbye to her, the honest statement of his feelings and his _apologies_ for failing, for not being there to take care of her the way he wanted: it all drove Ginn to more tears than she can ever remember shedding before. Eli’s standing here next to her and he has no idea just how badly she wants to throw herself at him, tell him she loves him, promise him _always_. It’s agony to know that she can’t.

 

But Ginn is no stranger to pain. She touches her hand to the inside of his right forearm, holding on and squeezing, and shows no sign of the hurt she feels. The brightness of her smile does not falter. Looking away from the screen at the warmth of her touch on his bare skin, Eli turns to her with wide, incredulous eyes. The ‘ _how?!_ ’ is on the tip of his tongue, but she beats him to the punch; her right hand slips into the concealed pocket of her shirt, retrieving something, and a moment later her fingers come up and uncurl to reveal a miniscule energy cell in her palm. It’s a perfect, tinier version of the ones he used to power the cooling press before. Glancing down, for the first time he notices that the little chip slot on the top of the interface is clogged tight with shards of broken crystal. “I read your notes and found these smaller cells in another box in the repairs bay,” she explains. “Rush won’t be too happy about the slot, but it did the trick.” Stunned, Eli carefully takes the thin sliver of crystal between his fingertips, and stares.

_So simple_. He can’t believe he didn’t think of it, can’t believe that the problem has been rectified by such a small thing. Even if the decision to stay behind will still claim his life, now he can at least save hers. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, gazing at the little cell caught between his thumb and forefinger, Eli feels hope. And he feels....unafraid. But this is only the first half of the battle. The second part is getting around the personnel code restriction, and Ginn is watching him with a patient, knowing expression on her face. Something tells him this next part isn’t going to be so easy. He folds up his fingers, tucking the cell neatly into his palm and searching her warm hazel eyes with his own, and as the final lamp goes out as he whispers, “What do we have to do?”

 

XxX

 

“We’ll have to be quick,” she says breathlessly as they hurry down the dark passageways, guided only by their memory and fumbling hands. Eli struggles to follow her in the blackness, wishing desperately for a light; once Ginn is asleep he’ll have to somehow find his way back to the closet and retrieve one of the crew’s precious few torches. Until now he’s refused to use them on the basis that they’ll be a vital part of his friends’ survival, both on board _Destiny_ and off-world – and with his slightly clumsy and careless tendencies, the torches were safer untouched. But when he’s alone again, without the comfort of Ginn’s confidence to help him keep his nerve, he knows that this impenetrable darkness will be too much. So he tells himself that he’ll be extra careful, and will keep the torch he uses unbroken. The others can recharge it later if need be.

“How long do we have?” he gasps out, starting as her hand grabs his and tugs him left down another corridor. They are relying solely on her good sense of direction and recall now: completely disorientated, Eli has no idea where they are, let alone which way it is to the Apple Core.

“If I’m right,” her voice floats out of the nothingness, “then we should have just about two minutes before we do serious damage to the time window and to the rest of the crew’s stasis program.”

“Okay. Two minutes. Got it......Ginn?”

“Yes?” Eli hesitates, unsure if he wants to know the answer to his question.

“What happened? With the Lucian mutiny?” She is silent for so long that he starts to think she isn’t going to reply. But then, without slowing down, he is just able to hear her murmur over the echoes of their footsteps:

“Kiva knew. The information was fake and we didn’t even make it as far as the armoury before we were stopped. She...interrogated...us for days. If Rush hadn’t dialled _Destiny_ when he did, we’d probably all be dead.”

 

XxX

 

The Apple Core is colder than he remembers, just like the familiar panel under his hands. Absent the usual buzz of laughing, working scientists, the room feels too empty; cold, empty and exposed. That, and it’s so dark he can’t see a thing. A little nervously, Eli licks his lips and calls out, “Ginn?”

“I’m right here, Eli,” come her hushed tones out of the black. She’s standing at a different panel on the other side of the interface, and when she slips the timer out of her pocket tiny pinpricks of light appear. Swallowing, he tells himself to get it together. Even knowing that the source of his fright before was in fact just Franklin, being near-blind and in total darkness makes his resolve quiver with fear.

“You’re sure this will work?”

“Positive. As long as we don’t mess up.” His heart jumps and hammers in his mouth – because if they do somehow get this wrong, he won’t be the only one who dies. They’ll kill all of the sleeping crew in an instant. “Are you ready?” No. No, he’s not at all ready.

“Yeah. Let’s do this.” The intended crew of the _Destiny_ never made it to the ship, so no personnel codes were ever assigned. Which means the only way Rush could have brought the stasis pods online before was by using the master code, the one sequence that overrides all others. Eli’s already formed what he thinks is a correct idea of what happened: weeks ago, Rush finds the stasis halls and activates the system from the bridge using the master code. Realising what he’s onto, he says nothing to the rest of the crew, leaving the system online just in case of ‘an emergency’. Then Brody and Eli find the halls themselves, and to protect himself he feigns ignorance and tells them to leave it alone. When they don’t, he temporarily freezes Brody from the bridge to teach them both a lesson. Then when they do have to go into stasis and Eli volunteers to stay behind, he briefly considers the advantages if the boy were to be removed. He hesitates, because the kid is his friend, and he goes to Eli’s quarters with the intention of telling him everything – how to fix the pod, where the information is, what he’ll need to do. Only he doesn’t. When it comes down to it, he decides it’ll all be much better for him in the long run if he doesn’t have to compete with the ‘videogame slacker’. So he feeds Eli some lies about his ‘potential’, and leaves the boy to his fate. That’s what happened. That’s the choice Rush finally made, Eli is sure of it. If the older scientist ever even hesitated at all.

 

“Eli?” Ginn’s confused voice brings him sharply back to the present, and he’s dimly aware that she’s been talking to him.

“Yeah, sorry,” he says, shaking himself. He has to deal with this, first. He’ll figure out a way to deal with Rush later, once Ginn is safe. “What were you saying?” She knows he can’t see her frown of concern in the darkness, and for that she is grateful.

“I said, once I turn the system on you’ll have two minutes to find the master code, and then I’ll have to turn the system off whether we’ve got it or not. I don’t want to accidentally hurt the others. Or worse.” Eli nods in understanding, then remembers she can’t see him.

“Okay. I’m ready.” He’s _really_ , really not.

“When I say go, then....” They lapse in to a tense silence as Ginn waits for the timer to reach a full minute, to make things simpler. Eli’s breathing is shaky in the black. And then, just when he’s beginning to wonder if she’ll ever give the word, there is an audible _click!_ as she flips the main switch to reactivate the system and bright light suddenly blinds them both and she half-shouts,

“Go!” But he can’t see. He can’t see a thing, the lights of the interface eye-wateringly strong after the past hour of complete darkness. His eyes burn and sting, and he swipes at them blindly. “ _Eli!_ ” The urgency in her tone is contagious. Blinking hard, he fights through the white spots dancing in his vision and starts to press buttons as quickly as he can. Since the Lucian attack, Young has had Eli and Rush working on a way to isolate important data in _Destiny_ ’s system and hide it away, accessible only by using a specific code known to certain members of the crew. The idea is to protect _Destiny_ ’s most valuable and important data from future intruders – once they figure out what that data is, of course. They’ve been pretty successful so far, and have recently begun trialling the software on their own laptops. But what neither Rush nor Colonel Young knows is that Eli has been working on a little something of his own in his spare time.

 

His search program can hack the protected area of the system and access that information without the need for a code, and copy and transfer the data in seconds. The program leaves no trace of its presence: there would be no way of knowing that the system area had ever been breached at all. Rushing, Eli finds the slot on the panel and slides the chip in, allowing his precious new project into _Destiny_ ’s mainframe computer. Tapping a few keys and typing in a short sequence, Eli begins. The program immediately starts an intricate search of the whole mainframe, looking for that invisible, expertly-hidden section Eli knows is there. If Rush ever needed to keep something from the rest of the crew – say, a master code – that would be where he’d hide it. With a changed access code, of course, so that Eli couldn’t get in. He wouldn’t have dreamed that the ‘videogame slacker’ would pre-empt this, let alone take his own precautionary measures to prevent the scientist from screwing them all over. Again. A quiet bip from the interface tells him the program has located the hidden part of the system, and he presses another button to start the hack. “One minute,” Ginn calls out, just a faint unsteadiness lingering around the edges of her voice. She’s gripping the timer so tightly her knuckles are turning white and she daren’t take her hand away from the switch. “Fifty seconds.” Eli can barely hear her over the thunderous drumming of his pulse in his ears. He types in a quick sequence to narrow the search, though he’s certain he messes up the digits in his haste, and bounces anxiously on the balls of his feet.

_Hurry hurry hurry hurry..._

“Forty seconds.” Still no code, and now he starts to panic. “Thirty seconds....” And then it’s there, right there on his screen, the key to all of _Destiny_ ’s secrets and systems, and he hits the buttons to copy the data without a moment’s hesitation. “Twenty seconds.” _Beeeeee!_ A flash of text springs up abruptly with a loud, uncomfortable screech from the interface, and Eli’s heart jumps in his chest – he’s hit a secondary firewall.

“Oh, shit.” _That son of a bitch!_

_What’s wrong?!_ Ginn wants to yell, wants to go over and see for herself, but she can’t. She has to stay by the switch and the words stick in her throat as Eli starts to curse and the timer counts steadily down. _Fifteen seconds_.

 

He punches keys and the program starts to work past Rush’s firewall, _not fast enough not fast enough go faster for the love of –_

“Ten seconds!”

_Through! Copy copy copy –_

“ _Eli?!_ ” _Beeee!_ “Five seconds!”

_Transferring transferring –_ “Nearly there!”

“Three seconds!” _Beeee!_ Eli hits buttons and wrenches the chip from the slot just as Ginn slams the switch down, and the system shuts off and they’re plunged back into impenetrable darkness once more. For a few moments, neither one of them speaks. Ginn’s heart is pounding; Eli is shaking like a leaf, his breathing heavy and uneven. Then, weakly, she asks, “Did we get it?” Eli swallows, sucking in a deep breath and releasing it, pressing the heel of his trembling hand to his forehead, and sighs out,

“Yeah. Yeah, we got it.”

 

XxX

 

“How much time did that cost?” He’s not really sure he wants to know but he asks anyway; he has to update the timer. The look on Ginn’s face when she glances up at him doesn’t help. Her frown illuminated by the light of the main stasis interface, her hands pause raised halfway to the keys. She seems to almost hesitate before he answers him.

“The power balance between _Destiny_ ’s mainframe systems and the stasis programs is very sensitive,” she finally says, deliberately turning back to the screen to hide her concern from him. “If my calculations are correct, then those two minutes should have left.....about fifteen hours of life support remaining.” Her heart flutters nervously: less than a day to live. Shocked into silence beside her, Eli is thinking the same thought. Ginn doesn’t know what else to say, so she leaves her words hanging ominously in the air. Rush’s laptop is open in Eli’s arms, the chip containing the master code connecting neatly to one of the USB ports using an adaptor of Brody’s invention. She reads the code from the screen and carefully taps it into the interface. They resist the urge to hold their breath as her finger presses lightly down on the ‘execute’ button. The only response the interface gives is a quick, quiet blip; no text, no menus, no other noise. She desperately hopes that means that it worked, because if it didn’t then they are in a whole new kind of trouble.

 

As Eli closes the laptop and she reaches for his notes and the activation code, what could be the last stage in the battle to save his life, Ginn finds Eli’s eyes and holds his gaze for one intense, anxious moment. The concern she tries to hide inside is mirrored in his dark orbs, honest and bare for her to see. What she doesn’t know is that his worry isn’t for his own life, but for hers. That day, standing on the o-deck watching the FTL stream after saying goodbye to Colonel Young, feels like an eternity ago. “Fingers crossed,” is all he murmurs, and she forces a weak smile in return. Finding the page with the activation code, her stomach starts to twist itself into knots. Fifteen hours isn’t a whole lot of time to come up with a new plan, if she fails. It’s also not a whole lot of time to wait to die, if she succeeds. Eli sets the laptop down on the floor and watches, too nervous to speak as Ginn finds the right menu to bring the final pod’s system back online, and types in the activation code still burned, crystal clear, into his memory. If this works, really it will have been Ginn that saved herself: since she was physically restored he hasn’t exactly done much, but now is not the time for wounded pride. Spock himself could have done it for all Eli cares right now, just so long as it works. She enters the last digit, and this time they both really do stop breathing as she gently hits the button.

 

A bleep, a buzz, a roll of text, and the colourless pod icon turns emerald.

_STASIS POD ONLINE._

 

For a long, long second, they don’t move. Can’t move. They just stare at the text on the screen, reading it over and over: _STASIS POD ONLINE_. Then the breath leaves their lungs in a sharp, hot burst of relief, and Ginn almost cries out in happiness and throws her arms around him, and he whoops and lifts her off the floor and spins her, laughing, holding her tight. _It worked_. Every single second of torment these past two weeks has been for _something_ , not fruitless, not a wasted effort, and he suddenly feels a little faint. She releases him first, but not for long; her chest aches and burns and her eyes are starting to sting with tears, and even though she’s not ready this is it, and she seizes him by the collar of his ruined shirt and kisses him full on the mouth. Just like that day in his quarters, all those months ago. He responds just as urgently, and the result is the kiss that she wants to remember – warm lips and grabbing hands, his body against hers and her fingers moving to tangle in his hair. She savours his feel and smell and taste, the silkiness of his curls and the wild, precious beats of his heart. The third and final goodbye. Eli’s thoughts are exactly the same.

 

When they finally break apart, his breath is a rush in her ear. _You need to go_ , he tries to say, _now before something goes wrong_. But the words won’t come out. They catch in his throat and stick there; so it’s Ginn, lifting her head determinedly from his shoulder and forcing herself to look him in the eye, that speaks first. “When you wake up, tell Varro what happened?” she asks, swallowing and refusing to let tears fall. “I would’ve liked to thank him, say goodbye, but I know he knows I’m grateful for everything. And tell everyone, from me, I....thank you. Just tell them thank you.” She smoothes out the area of his shirt she has crumpled between her fingers and nods to herself, making to step back, out of his embrace. He doesn’t let her go. Keeping her close in his arms, Eli blinks, and just looks at her blankly. When his hold around her doesn’t loosen, Ginn’s forehead creases a little in confusion. A note of surprise is clear in his voice when he replies,

“ _I’m_ not going.” Her eyebrows shoot up so fast it’s almost comical.

“Yes,” she corrects him slowly. “You are.”

“No,” he corrects her just as slowly. “You are.” Ginn shakes her head and moves back again, and this time he lets her go. Their arms drop, empty, to their sides.

“Eli – ” she starts to argue, but he cuts her off.

“You’re going into stasis, Ginn,” he says firmly. “Not me. You’ve got to take my place in the crew.”

 

She fixes him with a look of utter incredulity. “Only one of us can go in that pod, Eli, and it has to be you.” She can feel a laugh beginning to tickle her lungs, exasperated but something of almost awe, threatening to flutter up and out of her light as a breeze. “Don’t you understand how valuable you are?”

“I don’t care about that,” he says, his voice raising a fraction. “I just want you safe, and _alive_ – ”

“You think I don’t want the same for you?” Ginn replies, irritation prickling under her skin; this is hard enough as it is without him dragging it out. “Look at what this did to you – you were a mess when I came back – ”

“Ginn, you can’t ask me to go – ”

“I’m not asking!” she bristles, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m _telling_ you, you’re going into stasis!”

“I’m not going anywhere without you!” he shouts, a familiar fear starting to creep up his spine, claw at his heart, fill his lungs with ice water. He’s never really raised his voice to her, and it does little to aid her quickly-thinning patience.

“I did all of this to save _you_!” she snaps back. “I don’t care if I die as long as you’re alright – ”

“I’m _not. Going_!” An impatient frown creases his brow, frustration boiling beneath the fear.

“Why do you have to be so stubborn about it?” she demands with a wild gesture of her hands, her throat starting to constrict. This is not at all the way she pictured the goodbye, and Eli’s not backing down. The thought of facing the pod and the future alone curls like smoke and terror in the pit of her stomach, turning her cold. Not wanting to risk a crack forming in her facade, she turns her back to him and starts to walk away, into the shadows where her anxiety will become invisible.

 

“You’re the one being stubborn!” he yells, their voices carrying eerily along _Destiny_ ’s empty corridors. An ache he has tried desperately to forget is taking root in his chest, and his brain-to-mouth filter momentarily slips; he aims the words at her retreating figure without thinking. “I’ve already made plans for your life on Earth after I’m gone!” Ginn stops dead the moment the information registers. Realising too late what he’s just admitted, Eli abruptly goes silent and wishes he could bite his own tongue off. A blush immediately begins to rise on his cheeks, and his anger evaporates. She wasn’t supposed to know about that part yet. Not until after he’s dead and she can’t hit him for making arrangements for her life after _Destiny_ without her permission. There was nothing controlling or presumptuous in his intentions, but it’s painfully clear to him just how it must sound to her. She turns on her heel, staring at him with disbelief etched into her features, and asks,  
“ _What_?” His lips are still tingling. He can’t meet her eyes for longer than a few seconds. Looking at the floor, he swallows nervously and answers in a low murmur,

“I recorded a list of last requests on the kino. One of them was that....that after the crew return to Earth, you’d be allowed to live as a US citizen without persecution or arrest. And I asked some of the others to make sure you got to my mom and stayed with her until you were on your feet. Make sure you were safe.” His gaze flickers hesitantly over blazing hazel-brown orbs to a particularly interesting patch of nothingness. “You always talk about Earth like it’s some kind of heaven. Paradise,” he continues. “I know what it means to you and I just wanted to be sure you could be free there. Safe. Happy. After what happened to your homeworld, I wanted to be sure you could move on and have a normal life without having to feel afraid or alone...” He trails off as her footsteps sound quick and loud on the metal floor, and he looks up just in time for her to smack him in the chest. “ _Ow_ – ” She hits him again, sharply. “Ginn, what – ”

 

“Be _happy_?!” Ginn cries, wide-eyed and stricken. “Are you _insane_?!” Another slap, and another. “How can you think for a _moment_ that I could be _happy_ if you were – if you were – !” Eli catches her wrists, and pulls her close to his chest to stop the assault – but the tears on her face take him completely by surprise.

“Ginn – ”

“ _Are you insane_?!” she repeats, but she stops fighting his grip. She goes slack against him, breathless and dishevelled, her attempts to be strong having crumbled to dust at his words. Eli stares at her in shock, left speechless by her uncharacteristic outburst. Ginn is always so calm, so together. Her strength cracks right along the still-healing fissure in her heart, and all the fear of the last few hours comes pouring out. “I don’t care how perfect Earth is,” she tells him as a tear drips off her chin. “I won’t be happy there without you. I won’t be happy _anywhere_.” Eli’s expression begins to soften, as does his grip, but she goes on. “After everything I’ve lost, Eli, you’re the best thing I have. I can’t lose you, too, I can’t and I won’t, I can’t do it. I’d rather die myself, and know that _you’d_ be safe, and happy, and able to go home to your mother and your old life, I’d rather die.” She looks down, squeezing her eyes shut tight and trying to breathe – then Eli lets go of her wrists and gentle fingers touch her face and tilt her chin up to meet his gaze. Her heart jumps at the pure, unadulterated fear in his eyes.

“You can’t ask me to live without you again,” he half-says, half-pleads, his voice huskier than normal as he fights to keep his emotions in check. “Not again, Ginn, I can’t go through it a second time. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you with me. We’re a team, without you, I....I’m too scared to face it on my own, okay? Please don’t make me, not again.” He wipes the last tear from her cheek with his thumb and then wraps his arms around her and hides his face in her hair. Ginn breathes shakily into the crook of his neck and tries to get a grip, tells herself to pull it together. Crying isn’t going to help; but still she has to bite her lip, because she knows what she’s asking of him, and it’s exactly what he’s asking back. Exactly the one thing neither of them is willing to do: live without the other.

 

XxX

 

Minutes pass. Breathing slows and tears dry, and it becomes clear, now, what the only real option is. _So this is it?_

_Yes._

_Together._

_Together._

Ginn finally mumbles _I love you_ against his skin.

 

XxX

 

“I planned to be in my quarters. When it happened. Seal it off from the inside so the rest of the crew wouldn’t find...well. Y’know.” Eli’s fingers brush over the glass of the stasis pod, lightly, leaving no trace. Beside him, Ginn nods in understanding.

“It’s a good plan,” she tells him quietly. “We should do that.”  
“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Beneath the glass, Colonel Young sleeps on. Eli hopes the older man won’t be angry, or disappointed with what he and Ginn have decided to do. He hopes he’ll understand. There had been no other choice but for him to volunteer in Young’s place, nearly two weeks ago. And now, there is no other choice but for him – for them – to end it this way. Most of the things he said in his Will still apply, and they’ll record an update to explain what happened. The kino is heavy and cold in his hand. Ginn squeezes his other hand gently, before stepping away from him. She crosses the room to the interface and starts to push buttons, a sudden thought having occurred to her. Eli turns from Colonel Young’s pod and watches her curiously. Softly, he asks,

“What are you doing?”

 

“Working out how long we really have left,” she answers. “We still haven’t factored in the oxygen you used up before _Destiny_ restored me. All the kino recordings, plus, if you talked to yourself as much as I know you did....” A little smile tugs at her corner of her mouth, and her eyes glimmer with affection and amusement as she glances over at him. Eli can’t help but grin back. Ginn turns her attention back to the interface, still smiling. “I just need to put it all into an equation, _and_.....” A few more clicks and a blip, and Ginn’s blank expression betrays no sign of her internal reaction to the answer on her screen. Calmly, she pulls the timer from her pocket and starts to enter the new countdown. Eli waits until she’s finished and has slipped the device back into her pocket before he asks the obvious question:

“How long do we have?” Ginn returns quickly to his side, taking his hand in hers once again. Looking up at him, she answers,

“Just over six hours.” His stomach gives a little jolt, but if he’s honest with himself he feared worse. Forcing a smile, he rubs circles into the back of her hand with his thumb, and quirks an eyebrow suggestively.

“Not bad. There’s a lot you can do in six hours.” It works; she laughs, light and genuine, the most wonderful sound he’s ever heard. Giving his fingers another squeeze, she rolls her eyes, and together they cast one last, long look around at some of their sleeping friends. Then, silently, they leave the room. _Going to sleep doesn’t seem like such a bad idea._

 

XxX

 

_5 Hours...._

His heart thuds steadily in his chest, counting down, one beat after another like the ticking of a clock. The sound is familiar and reassuring in her ear, a much-needed comfort in these final hours. Eli swirls intricate patterns over her spine under her shirt, holding her all the more tightly each time she presses closer. Even though he knows what’s coming, it’s hard to feel frightened when he’s here, safe and warm beneath the blankets of his bunk with her. Ginn’s light breathing filters out across his neck, vibrant curls tickling his cheek; it occurs to him that he’s never felt more alive than he does now, at the very end. Every sense and touch and sound that went unappreciated, the scratch of a rough thread against skin, each soft pull of precious air inside lungs – all of it, real, for the first time. And the last. At some point, before it’s over, he’ll have to leave this sanctuary and disable the door lock system. Gather his belongings and deposit them outside in the hallway, for his mother. They’ll need to leave the kino there, too, with their update and Ginn’s goodbyes. At some point. Before it’s over.

 

XxX

 

_4 Hours...._

They have already spent the last ten minutes planning what to say when Eli presses the button on the kino panel to record, and a little message tells them, _Databank Full_. He sighs heavily, more disappointed than annoyed. He’d wanted to record an explanation of what happened with Ginn’s restoration and after, not just for the sake of documentation and his film, but also for the benefit of their friends, and his mother. Navigating their way to the closet and the crate of kinos in the dark, though, will take longer than they can afford. Ginn rubs his arm, smiling sympathetically, and reminds him that he has fresh paper and a pencil amongst his notes: a letter will have to do, however brief. Eli retrieves the items in a flash, presses a kiss to her temple, and together they lay down their account.

 

XxX

 

_3 Hours...._

The letter sits neatly folded on the floor next to his bunk, alongside the kino panel and full device. He is about to get up and disable the door lock system when the sound of life support starting to shut down begins to ring from distant areas of the ship, and he decides he’ll wait just a little while longer.

 

XxX

 

_2 Hours...._

 

All over the ship, section after section of the _Destiny_ is slowly being sealed off, the life support going into automatic shutdown as scheduled by Rush. As the allocated power begins to run out the air in the occupied area of the ship is thinning; an uncomfortable ache throbs in Eli’s temples, his breathing slightly laboured. It’s gradually getting harder to breathe. He is starting to think he should probably disable the door now, while he can still move and think clearly, but as he tries to summon the energy to push the blankets off Ginn’s fingers tug on his shirt sleeve. When he looks at her there is a sudden deep sorrow in her eyes. “I just realised something so sad, Eli,” she murmurs, voice a little hoarse from lack of use – not a word has been spoken between them for the past hour, the silence broken only by the distant echoes of life support shutting down one compartment at a time. “After we’re gone, _Destiny_ ’s going to be completely alone for _three years_. Her only crew will be asleep.” Eli feels the corner of his mouth curve up in a smile – somehow, he’s not at all surprised that, on the very verge of death themselves, Ginn’s main concern is the wellbeing of the ship they’ll leave behind. Shaking his head in amusement, he whispers back,

“ _Destiny_ ’s a computer, Ginn. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” But Ginn looks out at the rest of his relatively small quarters, at the floor, the ceiling, the walls, and shakes her own head in disagreement.

“No,” she says. “I don’t believe that anymore.” She turns her earnest, almost anxious gaze to him and he knows she’s not joking when she adds, “ _Destiny_ ’s conscious. She’s awake. I think she always has been.” Eli considers this for a few moments. _Destiny_ a conscious mind? He has to admit, it would explain a lot. The way she gets into their heads, knows everything ahead of time, works with them. Manipulates her crew like marionettes.....Running one of her fiery curls through his fingers, he asks,

“This....‘godlike power’ that the Lucians thought was associated with _Destiny_....you think it’s actually her?”

 

Thinking, Ginn returns her head to Eli’s chest. His hand moves gently through her silky hair, wishing he had some Tylenol for this damn headache. “Not quite,” she finally answers, sighing out the words across his shirt. “I think the whole ‘godlike power’ idea is more likely something to do with her mission. Her _real_ mission. But _Destiny_ is definitely more than just technology and artificial intelligence.” He nods, still stroking her hair, agreeing with her now that he’s given the idea some serious thought. The way Franklin spoke about _Destiny_ – with a capital ‘S’, as if discussing a real person – and the things he said....there has to be more to it than meets the eye. Eli just wishes he could have the chance to find out what that is. “Makes you wonder if she ever got lonely, in all those years she spent without any crew at all.” Again he nods, and he does wonder. If _Destiny_ really is what they believe she could be, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that she might be capable of some form of emotion. For a few minutes or so they lapse back into a comfortable silence. Ginn closes her eyes and tries to ignore the dull pain pulsing above her left eyebrow. Despite her obvious consciousness, her clear capabilities, _Destiny_ is not going to save them now.

“Do you know what makes me sad?” Eli suddenly asks, his voice low. Her eyes flutter open and fix on one of the multiple bloodstains his shirt bears, humming in acknowledgement of his words, prompting him to continue. “All these questions,” he confesses, holding in a sigh. “All these questions, and we’ll never get to know the answers. Like the intended crew, for instance – we’ll never know who they were, or what happened, why they _really_ launched _Destiny_ but never made it here....we’ll never know.” Ginn slides a hand up and brushes her fingertips over the spot of dried blood. She’s glad that it won’t end violently for them. She’s seen more than enough violence in her lifetime. She doesn’t want to experience it in death, too.

 

“Yes,” she agrees quietly. “That is an awful thought. I would’ve liked to know why they never came.”

“Rush was a little obsessed with the whole thing, really. He used to spend hours reading over relevant files on his laptop, but I don’t think he ever found out why.” A moment passes, and then Ginn looks up, curious.

“What _did_ he find out?” she asks, resting her chin on his chest, her palm splayed flat over the bloodstain. A light frown crosses Eli’s face as he thinks back, tries to remember what little Rush divulged to him after hours of nagging. At the time his own grasp of Ancient had still been too ‘limited’, as the older scientist put it, for him to fully understand the reams of data stored in _Destiny_ ’s mainframe without difficult translation Later, when his Ancient was better, there had never really been time for him to go back and look for himself.

“He wouldn’t tell me much of it,” Eli explains, wishing now that he _had_ looked. “Just that there were supposed to be roughly twice as many of them as us; about 150, 160, I think he said. Big crew for a big ship. There were some hints about _Destiny_ ’s mission – she’s supposed to be looking for something, which is what we thought. But he said there were huge holes in the data. Like it was there once, but was wiped from the system.” Eli sighs disappointedly and resumes stroking her hair. “Rush thinks that they got distracted by Ascension before they could send the crew out, and at some point the ship deleted her own mission plan to protect herself.” His eyes flicker down to meet hers; it’s so dark in the room that he can barely see past her face and his chest, tiny beams from the timer now their only source of light. Smiling sadly at him, she leans up and presses a kiss to his chin, and says,

“Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

 

XxX

 

_1 Hour...._

 

He feels sick. His head is pounding painfully and his breaths are shallow. Ginn is asleep, thank God, her fingers scrunching the material of his shirt in her hand. He’s grateful, because it means she won’t feel a thing, won’t suffer. He couldn’t stand to watch her suffer. Eli quickly realised he should’ve broken the door earlier – his energy is gone, now, and his concentration is starting to follow. He’s beginning to lose his thoughts, the ends of sentences slipping away from him faster than he can pull them back. He takes it as a sign that when _it_ actually happens, he might not be focussed enough to even realise. Part of him, a part deep inside where strength still exists, wants to laugh: after everything he’s been through in the past year and all the trials he’s survived, it’s asphyxiation that’s going to kill him. Their first ever crisis on board _Destiny_ will be his last. It seems fitting somehow, like

_Rush’ll be pleased, won’t he? This was his little plan after all, and it succeeded perfectly, so he’ll be_

Eli squeezes his eyes shut, hard, and opens them again. _Gotta stay focussed. Gotta get up. Gotta_

_and we’ll never find out how Destiny got so battle-scarred, will we? Like, maybe she went through some kind of fight, or maybe it was those blue aliens, after the_

_what Franklin said about the real mission, we’ll never_

_crew would’ve been alright though, if they’d joined the ship, they’d have been_

_some kind of drone attack maybe like the ones we just escaped or another force or_

_they would’ve been alright they could’ve gone into stasis there’d be enough pods if they all shared like_

_her shields held up pretty damn well after all this time though really it’s_

 

The small part of his mind still desperately clinging onto concentration slams the breaks on his thought process. _There’d be enough pods if they all shared like._ Shared. _Shared._ That’s the answer. Adrenaline bursts and sizzles through his veins like an explosion of fire and he sits up so fast that the room starts to spin. Ginn slides from his chest and wakes with a start. “Eli?” she croaks, lifting a hand to press against her temple. He’s trying to get out of bed but the dizzy spell is throwing him off, so she reaches out to take his wrist and steady him. Instead, a much larger hand closes around her own and tugs insistently, and Eli fights through the nausea to gasp,

“We can live, Ginn. We...live.”

 

XxX

 

It’s so obvious, he can’t believe he didn’t see it before. What kind of ship has a crew of 160 souls and the capacity to save the lives of only half? He’d wheezed the words into her ear as they stumbled, dizzy and blind, through _Destiny_ ’s dark hallways to the stasis hall: _dual stasis protocol_.

 

XxX

 

“How....many left?” Ginn struggles to breathe, using the main interface to support most of her weight. On the other side of the panel Eli is swaying on his feet; sweat catches his curls and they stick to his forehead as he stares, unfocussed, at the paper he holds in his hand.

“F-five,” is his rasp in answer. One of these codes, scribbled in pencil from his first search of Rush’s laptop, needs to be the activation sequence for dual stasis – an emergency protocol, he tried to explain as he fought for breath. Two people can share a pod in an emergency, it’s the only explanation and the only answer and if they find the code they can both live. But they still have five to try and they’re out of hours. 30 minutes on the clock with oxygen levels dangerously low and if they pass out now, it’s Game Over.

“Read....the next...one.” Eli takes the deepest breath he can, and raises the paper to his eyes. He can barely read the next sequence through the black spots popping in his vision.

“T-ten....two...n...nine....five.” _Bleee_. The interface bips in protest when Ginn presses ‘execute’: it’s not that one. Eli reels off the next nine digits as fast as he can, which turns out not to be very fast at all, but it doesn’t matter. The interface rejects that code too. “Four, no, s-sorry....nine...one....f-four,” he gasps next. _Bleee_. Two codes left, a single digit and another, standard nine-digit sequence. One of them has to work, otherwise they’re going to die right here on the stasis hall floor, in mere minutes. Ginn pushes her hair out of her eyes and reaches out a weak, trembling hand for the paper. She reads the nine digits herself as Eli moves, with painstaking effort, around the panel to her side. _675284301\. Bleee._ It has to be _9_. It needs to be _9_. Ginn isolates the pod for the millionth time, types in the lone number. Eli is the one to press ‘execute’, and he’s the one to collapse when the panel blips again. His knees won’t hold him up any longer and he can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t even move. The kino rolls from his pocket and disappears into the darkness, vanishing along with his hope. The panel slides across the floor after it. His eyes slip closed and when he tries they won’t open again. Too heavy. Too tired.

 

But Ginn still has breath, even if the interface is the only thing keeping her on her feet. “No,” she gasps out, over and over. “No, no, no.” She smoothes the paper crumpled in her hand and stares at all the codes scattered across the page, a jumble of numbers, crossed out but for the final five. The shorter ones are crammed together in a corner, _10295, 914, 9_ , encircled by the longer nine-digit sequences that take up the rest of the page. She stares and stares at them and her thoughts are crumbling, tumbling over each other and falling away. Her vision is starting to blur, and Eli lies completely still against the foot of the interface. “Eli!” Ginn forces out, as loud as she can. “Stay with me!” Gasping for air, the panel is supporting all of her weight now, and as she continues to stare at the paper there’s only one thing she can fully comprehend: those codes should not be shorter than the others. “Eli!” He doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound, not that she’d hear it over the relentless hammering of her heart. The page chooses that moment to slip from her grasp – the tips of her fingers are numb. Ginn represses the urge to cry, her knees starting to buckle beneath her as she looks down at Eli, unconscious on the floor. _This can’t be it._ But still she can only hold on to that one thought for longer than a second. _Those codes should not be shorter than the others_.So she starts to type, her fingers fumbling shakily over the keys. _102959149._ One last try. One last guess.

 

As soon as she presses ‘execute’ a loud buzz bursts from the interface, and letters surface under her hands to tell her, _DUAL STASIS ACTIVATED._ The last of her breath leaves her when she looks up to see the lights on in the final pod. They’ve done it. She stares in shock for a maybe a moment before she remembers that they don’t have time to hang around. Dropping to her knees, she grabs hold of Eli’s collar and shakes him as hard as she can – which, with her energy all but gone, isn’t very hard. “ _Eli_ ,” she wheezes weakly, wondering if she should slap him again. “ _Wake up!”_ Still nothing. “ _Eli!_ ” His eyelashes flutter, just once, just briefly, but he’s alive. Ginn pulls at his shirt and tries to get back up, to drag him with her, but her legs fold the instant she attempts to stand and _they’ve done it, oh God they’ve done it_ but she can’t move him, she can’t –

 

And then strong, icy fingers dig into her arm and pull her up as easily as if she were made of paper, and she’s face to face with a man she’s never seen before. She knows immediately who he must be. Franklin lets her go and bends down, slips his arms under Eli’s and hauls him quickly to his feet. His eyes finally open, dazed and unfocused. Then he’s being pushed and pulled through an ocean of black spots and freezing hands and the _familiar_ whirring of technology, and three walls enclose around him and then a fourth. When Eli’s vision clears, Ginn is holding tightly onto him, and the last thing he sees through the glass door of the pod is Franklin’s smile, and then nothingness.

 

_Fin_.


End file.
